Yeah... mine sat on 82% for like 9 hours.
In-general unless your PC goes *completely frozen (like you can't even move you mouse on the screen) Windows Update doesn't really "freeze" it just hangs on to certain percentages while it does "something" behind the scenes (what we don't know and it probably
shouldn't be doing).
SO: like you said "let it do it's thing". If you think it's frozen it probably isn't.
I found this post after countless attempts (over 10) to complete an update from 1909 to 2004. After letting my work computer sit for over 4.5 hours this time and seemingly get to and be stuck at 59%, I decided to conduct some additional research. On one
hand, I'm happy to see I'm not the only one suffering. On the other hand, I'm astonished...your experience was 9 hours? I would imagine many others have experienced varying times (longer or shorter), but I can't fathom having to wait 9 +/- hours for
my computer to be "updated" to the latest feature(s). I am running out of patience/defense of my lifelong support of this platform -- Microsoft needs to get back to the fundamentals and put an end to this "as a service" trainwreck they've come up with. Your
9-hour experience beats Microsoft's infamous Server 2016 update fiasco by like 6 hours. The majority of those who could do so, well, they upgraded to Server 2019 (the only well-documented solution, if one could even call it that). Those of us who are less
fortunate, we suffer just about every month when it comes time to apply the monthly cumulative updates. Shame on Microsoft.