Why are Windows updates so slow (and long) with Windows 7

Though this may sound like a very nice answer, it really does not explain why when you look at the Windowsupdate.log file the delay is NOT during the download or install phases but during the search.  You can see the time delay happen consistently as the system is communicating to https://fe2.update.microsoft.com/v6/ClientWebService/client.asmx

I ran my own test on three equal virtuals with Win7x64 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate.

All from the same source, same RAM/CPU, etc.

The Pro and Enterprise on empty systems during a "Check for Hotfix"  NOT AN INSTALL, took over an hour, while the Ultimate took about 3 minutes.  

This all started to slow down the same day Windows 10 was released.  

So, what is the difference with Ultimate that MSFT will allow it to patch at normal speeds, but throttle down the lower versions?

I'm looking now at a windows Defender update in the log and the Search took nearly 1:45hours to run:

2015-10-09 05:48:45:224 9696 27d8 COMAPI -------------

2015-10-09 05:48:45:225 9696 27d8 COMAPI -- START --  COMAPI: Search [ClientId = Windows Defender]

2015-10-09 05:48:45:225 9696 27d8 COMAPI ---------

2015-10-09 05:48:45:603 9696 27d8 COMAPI <<-- SUBMITTED -- COMAPI: Search [ClientId = Windows Defender]

2015-10-09 06:24:06:449 1024 26e8 Agent  * Added update {B8994878-0FA7-435E-BDF4-4DBF8A64CCE5}.100 to search result

......

Try again, Microsoft.  This appears too coincidental and much too subversive to suddenly be just a large number of patches.  We would have seen a gradual increase in the time delay, not go from 3-15 minutes to over an hour on the same day Windows 10 was released.

Bruce Orand

Tampa FL

I agree with you 100%.

I performed a clean install of Windows 7 Home 32 bit on an older PC for my daughter.

I had to manually download SP1. Action Center is reporting that updates are good but this is a clean install.

There have to be at least 100+ updates with a clean install. 

Next plan is to leave PC in sleep mode (I usually shut down) and see if it pulls anything.

Hi

Slow process it could detect on any update process, when you set check update, it take long time to check and display package, if any package and no mean package size (silly small package take long time too!!) again it take long time!

No reviewing form Microsoft about update process and no answer, only some guys where it can suggest about personal experiences, but it seems the are testing their experience with customers with maybe with similar issue or they are looking to get relevance on forum,  so how customer could trust on Microsoft and new products?

Yesterday a friend asked to install a fresh copy of Windows 7 on his new PC. He does not like Windows 8 because it has the mess with the two kinds of applications and charms and start menu which require tweaks or third party tools, and he has many applications which are not yet ready for Windows 10, therefore Windows 7 is the best choice.

Installing Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit with SP1 was a breeze, it took less than an hour. And then I launched updates, but before that I disabled System Restore and antivirus to ensure fastest speed possible and I have 100 Mbps Internet.

Windows Update told that there are 144 updates available. And I agreed to install them. Oh my god, how stupid I was. Update is running for 12 hours already and it shows that it's installing 123 of 144. I noticed that .NET updates are especially slow. After some internet searches I found that I should have run some console commands to make updates faster because .NET is recompiling itself. And it seems, it is doing it after every update in the queue! Come on, Microsoft, why isn't update smart enough to see that there are multiple  .NET updates queued, and therefore it could run the compilation phase just once, at the very end!

So, that single update 123 is a security update for .NET 4.5 and it is taking an hour already. My friend is asking why it is taking so long to install and I don't know what to answer... "Because it's Microsoft Windows"?

What's strange - my resource monitor shows that the TrustedInstaller is using about 2GB of RAM (the machine has 4 GB) and is actively writing/reading to the disk, but the CPU usage is almost nothing. How does recompiling take so much memory and I/O activity but so little CPU? It almost seems that the Installer is just reading and writing the same files over and over again because in one hour it should be able to replace ALL of Windows files, but in 12 hours ... you guessed it, I could reinstall Windows on 12 other machines while this one is updating.

Is there some other way to make this process faster if I install Windows next time? Maybe downloading some pre-packaged updates and applying them at once instead of using Windows Update? 12 hours is crazy.

By the way, now when looking at today's update history, I see that most of them have status "Waiting" (most probably, waiting for reboot), but three .NET 4.5 updates have status Failed, error 643. These are 2972216, 3037581 and 3023224, and so I'll have to search the internet again to see what's going on. How can they fail on a completely fresh Windows 7 install and if they have failed, then why it takes almost an hour for each of them to fail? I'm afraid to think how much would it take for them to install successfully if even failing took so much time (being sarcastic here).

Ok, enough rant.