Clean Install Win7 SP1 x64 - Windows Updates Not Working

[TheOsburnFamil]

Anyone else seeing this? Clean install of Windows 7 SP1 x64 and it just sits there forever doing "Searching for Updates".

No errors in Event Logs giving me any clues. Time & DNS are both good. Internet is good. Very strange.

[STC]

First go on a clean install does usually take a while to compile what's needed. How long is forever?

[TheOsburnFamil]

So after about 20 minutes and I still didn't have a list of updates (was still "searching")... I started messing around. Gave up after a couple hours and re-installed. Once the clean install finished, I didn't touch anything and went straight to windows updates... hit the search for updates and walked away. About 4 hours later it actually came up! Apparently this is the new normal for Windows 7 SP1.

[STC]

Compounding the issue is that a big wad of updates were released by MS in the last few days. A lot of machines will be still downloading and updating. Their servers are probably being hammered. MS moved to a monthly update cycle recently too.

[DavidinCT]

MS moved to a monthly update cycle recently too.

LOL, that is all I can say to that. Gone are the days of having a Windows computer that has not been rebooted for months. Updates show up every week for me, on WIndows 7, WIndows 8 and WIndows 10....

Anyone else seeing this? Clean install of Windows 7 SP1 x64 and it just sits there forever doing "Searching for Updates".

No errors in Event Logs giving me any clues. Time & DNS are both good. Internet is good. Very strange.

I see this all the time (I work in IT), it can hang for HOURS sometimes after a fresh install. This is normally Windows downloading updates. The quickest way to see if it's doing anything is go to

C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download

Check the folder size every once and a while, If it's growing, Windows is downloading updates. This is the folder where WIndows updates are downloaded to. If this folder is not growing, then you have something else going on.

Personally, if you can find a "slipstreamed" ISO before installing Windows 7, it saves a LOAD of time...there is a few people out there who make updated ISO for Windows 7, with ONLY updates, no hacks or anything.

[londonfog]

I've done some fresh installs recently and at first can only find a few updates. It isn't until I leave the computer on overnight that it finds over 200 others that take awhile to download and install.

It's just a waiting game, and if it's true that there are a bunch of new updates, expect longer delays.

[STC]

MS moved to a monthly update cycle recently too.

LOL, that is all I can say to that. Gone are the days of having a Windows computer that has not been rebooted for months. Updates show up every week for me...

Working in IT you'd know about WUB and Windows 10 then.
That is not my point: Enterprise level infrastructure and WSUS Servers are security monthly now. Windows 10 is another matter but that isn't a factor on the server load I am talking about.

[TheOsburnFamil]

Yeah so I probably wasn't very clear the other night when I posted this (long day). Reloading a clean Win7SP1 install nowadays, I fully expect there to be over 200 updates to download and install on a non slipstreamed/modified iso. And, I fully expect that process to take a couple hours or more. What I was confused on was the fact that Windows Update just sat the "Searching for updates..." with no indication it was doing anything else.

Even the second reload, I purposely loaded Windows w/o a network connection and told Windows Update to never download/notify updates. My thought/expectation was it would quickly process the "Searching for updates..." get me to the list of the 200+ and then I could select which one(s) BEFORE IT EVEN ATTEMPTED to download anything.

This is what was confusing me... why was it taking hours to search a clean PC for new patches just to get to the point where it'd take more hours to download & install them?

My assumption here is each check has to go back to a MS server to verify dependencies for each patch. So I think STC is correct that their update servers were simply overloaded and couldn't respond to the dependency checks quickly enough.

[londonfog]

Yeah so I probably wasn't very clear the other night when I posted this (long day). Reloading a clean Win7SP1 install nowadays, I fully expect there to be over 200 updates to download and install on a non slipstreamed/modified iso. And, I fully expect that process to take a couple hours or more. What I was confused on was the fact that Windows Update just sat the "Searching for updates..." with no indication it was doing anything else.

Even the second reload, I purposely loaded Windows w/o a network connection and told Windows Update to never download/notify updates. My thought/expectation was it would quickly process the "Searching for updates..." get me to the list of the 200+ and then I could select which one(s) BEFORE IT EVEN ATTEMPTED to download anything.

This is what was confusing me... why was it taking hours to search a clean PC for new patches just to get to the point where it'd take more hours to download & install them?

My assumption here is each check has to go back to a MS server to verify dependencies for each patch. So I think STC is correct that their update servers were simply overloaded and couldn't respond to the dependency checks quickly enough.

Yeah, windows update is just slow sometimes, and might need a restart or two.

The last few installs I've done have had me do about 3-4 update install/restart cycles slowly building up to the "200 updates" motherload.

[STC]

This is when the next SP becomes very handy.