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Problem description: I recently had to put a new motherboard into my faithful and battle-scarred desktop PC, and afterwards I formatted both hard drives and reinstalled Windows 7. I've had this issue before but never to this degree: Installing 7 doesn't take long at all... I still have my disc and I reinstall it, then I install a few essential drivers and software (Firefox, Dropbox etc) before I get to big things like games and such. I have a copy of Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 (the only one) built in, but there are still a huge number of updates to install and it takes forever and consumes ridiculous amount of disk space. I've heard of people taking three hours to update Win 7 (mine is x64 Ultimate), but it takes me literally days to install the hundreds of updates. I leave my computer going when I leave home or go to bed, and sometime's it's still installing crap 8 hours later. Plus, the install is eating up almost all of a 149 GB of hard drive space, which is ludicrous. I'm willing to reformat again to do it both correctly and efficiently, but I'm looking for a faster way to do it. I'm not terribly tech savvy and a lot of the things I have seen online seem beyond me in complexity. I did mess around a bit with WSUS Offline, but that doesn't install updates as far as I know, it just downloads them to make an .iso or some such. I'm basically looking for comparatively simple ways to update Windows 7 without eating up days of my life and using 100+ GB of disk space. Something odd is going on here, but I don't know what. Attempted fixes: I've googled a lot of methods, but I haven't tried to implement anything yet. Recent changes: I put in new hardware, but I don't think that that is involved -- Operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 System specs: Socket 775 2.66 quad core processor, 8 GB DDR3 Ram, GeForce 560. Two HDD drives: one is 160 GB and I just put my OS on it, one is 600 GB and is for everything else. My board/chip is too old for SSD Location: USA I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes and Yes
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Nov 11, 2015 17:20
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 09:47 |
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Performing updates after you install Windows shouldn't take more than a couple hours at most, I suspect you are installing from an old disc and then installing the updates in the wrong order. In the future, use a current ISO Image from Microsoft to install from, they offer "SP1-U" (Service Pack 1 Media Refresh) images which have a large number of updates integrated. After installing Windows, open Windows Update and install the largest updates first. If you don't install the latest version of IE, the .NET framework, and similar apps up-front, it will install all the updates to the older versions before updating. Once all updates have been applied you can run Disk Cleanup to reclaim the used disk space.
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Nov 11, 2015 18:26
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Alereon posted:Performing updates after you install Windows shouldn't take more than a couple hours at most, I suspect you are installing from an old disc and then installing the updates in the wrong order. In the future, use a current ISO Image from Microsoft to install from, they offer "SP1-U" (Service Pack 1 Media Refresh) images which have a large number of updates integrated. After installing Windows, open Windows Update and install the largest updates first. If you don't install the latest version of IE, the .NET framework, and similar apps up-front, it will install all the updates to the older versions before updating. Once all updates have been applied you can run Disk Cleanup to reclaim the used disk space. I install from a disc with Service Pack 1 integrated, then I install what Windows Update gives me. If there is a more "recent" version of Windows 7 out there, by which I mean one that has more updates integrated, I would love to know about it.
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Nov 11, 2015 18:34
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You can download the Service Pack 1 Media Refresh discs, though there isn't much more integrated than base SP1. You'll save a lot of time installing updates in the optimal order, but it sounds like you're experiencing update performance much slower than normal. Are you on a very restricted Internet connection, or is the system drive very full?
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Nov 11, 2015 18:39
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Alereon posted:You can download the Service Pack 1 Media Refresh discs, though there isn't much more integrated than base SP1. You'll save a lot of time installing updates in the optimal order, but it sounds like you're experiencing update performance much slower than normal. Are you on a very restricted Internet connection, or is the system drive very full? That is the weird bit. It eats up huge amounts of disc space even after cleaning, and I have a solid (about 7.7 downstream) internet connection. I'm really perplexed as to why this is so god-awful slow.
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Nov 11, 2015 19:10
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Are you sure space is actually being consumed? Run a program like Treesize Free as Administrator to confirm. E: Just to be clear, Disk Cleanup wouldn't do much until you have fully completed your updating cycles, and you will need to check the boxes related to Windows Update cleanup. Alereon fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Nov 12, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 19:27
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Also, to save time in the future, once you're done patching (and possibly installing a few pieces of software or whatever) take an image of the drive with something like acronis. Put that image, plus the acronis install onto a backup drive (and maybe a second backup drive to be safe) and if you have an issue again, you can start from a baseline. The reason to put the acronis or whatever program you choose into the backup folder as well is because sometimes things change with different version and they won't be compatible with the image you've taken. Although since you swapped the board out restoring from an image probably wouldn't have been the best choice. At any rate, this is exactly what I do in the event I have some sort of catastrophic windows issue and end up having to flatten/reinstall because gently caress taking 10-12hours to be back to fully functional baseline.
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Nov 12, 2015 19:40
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MF_James posted:Also, to save time in the future, once you're done patching (and possibly installing a few pieces of software or whatever) take an image of the drive with something like acronis. Put that image, plus the acronis install onto a backup drive (and maybe a second backup drive to be safe) and if you have an issue again, you can start from a baseline. The reason to put the acronis or whatever program you choose into the backup folder as well is because sometimes things change with different version and they won't be compatible with the image you've taken. The sad part is that it takes me much more than 10-12 hours... I could live with that. I actually tried the program that Alereon recommended and it was... illuminating. Part of my problem, on both fronts, is that I had accidentally installed all of the language packs, which not only takes a lot of time but also eats up nearly 10 GB of space. However, Treeesize basically showed me that I had some log files that were eating up nearly 60 GB of space on my C: drive... seriously. I had one that was 10, another about 9, and one that was almost 40 bloody gigabytes of space. I deleted those and it's night and day - I actually still have some space on my C: drive now. Windows 7 takes up a lot more space than I thought with all of those updates, but there isn't much I can do about that. I also have 12+ GB devoted to the page file, but I file that under "necessary evil" There are ways, usually for system admins, to make Windows discs with all of the updates integrated for quick mass installs, but I'm afraid that they are beyond me. Given that Windows 7 is almost to the point of being discontinued, I was hoping that a quick Google search would find me a "complete" version of it.
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Nov 12, 2015 21:27
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JustJeff88 posted:The sad part is that it takes me much more than 10-12 hours... I could live with that. Generally people create images which is what I suggested, a standard baseline image by building that image aka installing windows version, patching, maybe throw a few standard programs on there, and then take a complete image of that drive. There are many ways to do it, but I just happen to use acronis for my home machines, at work we use SCCM (I think, I don't handle any PC stuff, only servers etc which we have VM templates for). As far as the paging file, in all honesty with 16GB of RAM you probably won't end up using hte paging file much, but if your OS drive is 160GB and that's all you put on it, you've got plenty of space to spare (barring weird poo poo like your log file incident) *EDIT* A little info from a microsoft engineer regarding the paging file: https://mcpmag.com/Articles/2011/07/05/Sizing-Page-Files-on-Windows-Systems.aspx?Page=1 MF_James fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Nov 12, 2015 |
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Nov 12, 2015 21:44
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MF_James posted:Generally people create images which is what I suggested, a standard baseline image by building that image aka installing windows version, patching, maybe throw a few standard programs on there, and then take a complete image of that drive. There are many ways to do it, but I just happen to use acronis for my home machines, at work we use SCCM (I think, I don't handle any PC stuff, only servers etc which we have VM templates for). I have 8 GB and I have it set at 12... should I bump it to 16? I have an old chip and I want to squeeze what performance I have out of it.
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Nov 12, 2015 23:02
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There is no need to increase the pagefile size unless you are receiving out-of-memory errors, it won't help performance.
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Nov 13, 2015 02:15
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Yeah basically you probably don't even NEED a pagefile size that big because it's likely you aren't maxing the RAM unless you do video/sound editting, 3D modeling, taking kernel crash dumps or something intensive like that, even gaming won't max out your RAM most likely because it dumping poo poo into the pagefile would make the game very slow. Basically my point was you likely do not NEED a pagefile that big, but it's not hampering you in anyway from what you've described.
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Nov 13, 2015 04:52
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Is there a reason why Windows Updates has been taking forever lately? It took me over an hour to just search for updates on a fresh Windows 7 format (tried both 32-bit and 64-bit). The last time I formatted was just 3 months ago, and usually it takes just a minute or two to find 200+ available security updates. Wtf? Is there something wrong with Update servers? All fine on the installing part for me (75 updates installed in about 10 minute).
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Nov 16, 2015 17:35
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PPills posted:Is there a reason why Windows Updates has been taking forever lately? It took me over an hour to just search for updates on a fresh Windows 7 format (tried both 32-bit and 64-bit). The last time I formatted was just 3 months ago, and usually it takes just a minute or two to find 200+ available security updates. Wtf? Is there something wrong with Update servers? All fine on the installing part for me (75 updates installed in about 10 minute). Mine don't take me long to find, just to install... I'm talking dozens of hours here.
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Nov 16, 2015 17:50
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You do have a positively ancient HDD. Are you sure it isn't just dying? It would be prudent to run Crystal Disk Info (portable edition ZIP) to check their health if you haven't. Even if it is healthy it's just a dog-slow drive.
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Nov 16, 2015 17:55
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Alereon posted:You do have a positively ancient HDD. Are you sure it isn't just dying? It would be prudent to run Crystal Disk Info (portable edition ZIP) to check their health if you haven't. Even if it is healthy it's just a dog-slow drive. It's a 7200 RPM, but I know that it's old. I bought that board that you recommended and it's not HIAC enabled either, so SSD isn't an option right now.
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Nov 16, 2015 17:56
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I understand an SSD isn't an option, but there's a HUGE performance gulf between an ancient 160GB HDD, even if it isn't dying, and an HDD from the last couple years.
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Nov 16, 2015 17:59
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Alereon posted:I understand an SSD isn't an option, but there's a HUGE performance gulf between an ancient 160GB HDD, even if it isn't dying, and an HDD from the last couple years. I'd never really thought about that... that might explain in part why my boot times are so long.
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Nov 16, 2015 18:13
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Windows Update's abysmal performance isn't related to disk speed, in my experience. I've seen the Windows Update service max out a CPU core for a very long time while searching for available updates -- presumably determining which updates should be installed on the machine after a bit of network activity to download the list of available updates. While it's using as much CPU time as it can (I've seen it take 19 hours on a laptop with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo and 4GB RAM), there is no disk or network activity at all.
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Nov 17, 2015 22:48
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Lysidas posted:Windows Update's abysmal performance isn't related to disk speed, in my experience. I've seen the Windows Update service max out a CPU core for a very long time while searching for available updates -- presumably determining which updates should be installed on the machine after a bit of network activity to download the list of available updates. While it's using as much CPU time as it can (I've seen it take 19 hours on a laptop with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo and 4GB RAM), there is no disk or network activity at all. I think that that is my problem... my system lags horribly during installation. I have a Core 2 Quad 2.66 (I said that it was old) with 8 GB of now DDR3 RAM, and it is just beyond tedious.
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Nov 18, 2015 00:59
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Uhh if Windows update is pegging even a single core of a Core 2 CPU for more than a few minutes you have serious system problems that are unrelated to Windows Update. If Windows Update took more than a couple hours to complete it would be impossible to professionally repair computers for a reasonable price, so if it's taking longer than that there is something wrong with the system you are running on. People would never tolerate it if it took a full day to update Windows after an installation.
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Nov 18, 2015 01:23
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Unrelated to Windows Update, really? You must not yet be aware of KB3102810 (released Nov 3, 2015) yet? I just got through installing Windows (and attempting to update) for the 11th in the past 3 days, trying to figure out why "Searching for updates" is taking so long. Windows Update was "pegging" one of the cores of my Phenom II x4 for about an hour, not to mention each time saturating more than 2 to 3 gigs of RAM. I'm pretty sure my system wasn't the issue, because, unless it was just an amazing coincidence, that hotfix seemed to fix things right up. It was a bit tricky because you must first kill the svchost.exe that was maxing out the cpu core, or reboot Windows and not check for updates, before you run the KB3102810 standalone installer, or else you might be seeing the "Windows is searching for other updates on this computer" message for an equally large amount of time. I'm glad I finally got through this mess, but I think I'm gonna format once last time for peace of mind, installing that fix asap, just to make sure it wasn't my system being the culprit.  EDIT: BTW, Lysidas spoke so much truth. Glad to see I wasn't the only one. He/she had the same exact symptoms, although mine didn't take nearly as long. I especially like the fact that (like me) was observant enough to see that there was no disk/network activity at all for entire duration of the waiting period. Well done.
PPills fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Nov 18, 2015 |
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Nov 18, 2015 04:17
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PPills posted:Unrelated to Windows Update, really? You must not yet be aware of KB3102810 (released Nov 3, 2015) yet? I just got through installing Windows (and attempting to update) for the 11th in the past 3 days, trying to figure out why "Searching for updates" is taking so long. This is... both remarkable and coincidental? I'm not going to reinstall Windows 7 on this PC in order to check it out, but I have another PC that I am going to wipe and rebuild once I get some thermal paste and I will try this before I update. I genuinely don't think that it is my system because, even though it is old, it runs most modern software reasonably well despite the fact that AAA games and such put a lot of strain on both processors and GPUs.
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Nov 18, 2015 04:26
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Yeah, and if you've installed Windows and have gone through the Windows Updates process countless times in the past, on the same PC, then suddenly something like this happens, it kinda sets off a huge red flag. I had been googling around and noticed, since around July, other people on various forums not surprisingly had the same exact problem, although not necessarily on a fresh Windows install. That kind of hinted to me towards thinking it was a problem with WA, and not my system. I also read about some people believing the 'searching for updates' issue could have been due to the release of Windows 10, and the waves of people hitting up the Windows servers for updates and what not. But, I had my doubts about that - especially if it still persisted 4 months later. Update! Everything went good, as expected. SP1 required for the hotfix. Took about 30 minutes to install first batch of updates (SP1 and other small random updates). All normal so far. Rebooted. Installed the hotfix. Rebooted. Checked for updates... the moment of truth........ took only 5 minutes to find 220 updates, vs over an hour before! Yah! Downloaded and installed all of the updates. Took 2.5 hours...... wah? I don't remember it taking this long before, or maybe I was remembering incorrectly. Maybe it had to do with the other 4 gigs of RAM I took out when I was troubleshooting the issue? Either way, the fix worked as expected, so I'm good now. PPills fucked around with this message at 09:59 on Nov 18, 2015 |
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Nov 18, 2015 05:20
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PPills posted:Yeah, and if you've installed Windows and have gone through the Windows Updates process countless times in the past, on the same PC, then suddenly something like this happens, it kinda sets off a huge red flag. I had been googling around and noticed, since around July, other people on various forums not surprisingly had the same exact problem, although not necessarily on a fresh Windows install. That kind of hinted to me towards thinking it was a problem with WA, and not my system. I'll report back in this thread about the successs or lack thereof of this utility when I reformat my secondary desktop PC. My problem has been installing updates rather than finding/downloading them, so I hope that this update helps me too. I have a copy of Win 7 x64 Ultimate with SP1 pre-installed, which saves a lot of time and gives me the pre-requisites for this patch right from the off. I just wish that I had a copy of Win 7 x64 Ultimate with *every* update, as that would save bags of time indeed. Win 7 is just a few months from being no longer officially supported, so I can't imaginge there being too many more updates and hotfixes for it.
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Nov 18, 2015 13:37
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Alereon posted:Uhh if Windows update is pegging even a single core of a Core 2 CPU for more than a few minutes you have serious system problems that are unrelated to Windows Update. If Windows Update took more than a couple hours to complete it would be impossible to professionally repair computers for a reasonable price, so if it's taking longer than that there is something wrong with the system you are running on. People would never tolerate it if it took a full day to update Windows after an installation. Have you run Windows Update on a fresh install of Windows recently (either with SP1 integrated into the install media, or installing SP1 yourself afterward)? Windows Update is/was really that bad. I'll try manually installing the update that PPills linked to when I next do a clean install of Windows 7 for someone. I can definitely say that on a fresh install without that update, the Windows Update service pegs a CPU core doing who-the-gently caress-knows-what, for quite a long time. What's even more fun is that (as I recall) it does this twice: once when the status message is "Checking for updates...", and once at the first stage of "Downloading updates". The second stage of "use as much CPU as possible for a while" shows the helpful status message of (paraphrased) "Downloading update 0 of 0 (0KB), 0% complete". gently caress Windows Update.
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Nov 18, 2015 21:32
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PPills posted:It was a bit tricky because you must first kill the svchost.exe that was maxing out the cpu core, or reboot Windows and not check for updates, before you run the KB3102810 standalone installer, or else you might be seeing the "Windows is searching for other updates on this computer" message for an equally large amount of time. I just put back together my tiny little old #2 desktop, and I ran into this myself. As soon as I had installed the basics of Win 7 (I have a disc that has SP1 built in), I tried to install the utility and it did nothing for over 20 minutes. I killed the process, rebooted and ran it again, and it installed in 30 seconds. It's updating now and not going at a glacial pace... it's still going to take some hours, but that's a drat sight better than days.
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Nov 23, 2015 00:08
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Glad I'm not the only one experiencing a lot of pain with Windows Update. Got a new SSD recently, installed Windows 7 with SP1 just fine. But Windows Update takes forever to download the updates, seemingly stuck at 0% for a long time.
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Nov 23, 2015 02:15
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 09:47 |
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A few months ago I did a fresh install on an older desktop of mine using the newest ISO that I could find for Windows 7 Home x64 OEM, and ran into similar issues. One thing I did find is that if you open Resource Monitor and watch the processes running that it isn't actually hung, it is just going incredibly slowly. Once I finally got the first couple rounds of updates taken care of then Windows Update went back to just being painfully slow instead of glacially slow.
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Nov 23, 2015 09:56
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