Before Patch Tuesday (Aug 13) a "Check for updates" took less than 5 minutes. BUT that changed... as it has many times these last 6+ months. Today, the update scan was "active" (churning CPU cycles) for over 4 hrs before I aborted it. As before, the fix is simple... (also mentioned in
another MT post which contains reference URLs)
For a Win7 machine that was
fully patched the previous month, there's 1 security update that
needs to be installed first* to keeping Windows Update from spinning its wheels for hours:
- Sep, it is KB3185911 - MS Graphics Component update.
- Aug, it was KB3177725 - Windows kernel-mode driver update.
- July, it was KB3168965 - Windows kernel-mode driver update.
- June, it was KB3161664 - Windows kernel-mode driver update.
- May, it was KB3153199 - Windows kernel-mode driver update.
- April, it was KB3145739 - MS Graphics Component update.
- March, it was KB3138612 - March WU Client update.
It seems like the problem appears whenever there an update in the current crop that replaces Win32k.sys (from what I've been reading, the problem's likely with WU supersedence chain.)
NOTE: to avoid the long initial wait:
- Download the needed update manually either via MS Update Catalog (uses IE) or via the links on page Umbra mentioned in post #1
- Stop the Windows Update service.*
- Disable internet access (unplug ethernet cable or turn off WIFI)*
- Manually install the needed update.
- Re-enable internet access and reboot.
* If Windows Update service is running or there is internet access, any manual install of an update will result in your being greeting with a "Checking for updates" dialog that takes hours and hours to complete.
For a
fresh install of Win7 SP1 -- or machines which haven't been updated for awhile, there's another bit to the story: the
Windows Update Agent in place with a fresh Win7 SP1 install has become broken.
You can check
wuaueng.dll in your "Windows\system32" folder: ver. 7.6.7600.320 is the broken one. The basic fix is to first install
KB3020369 - April 2015 servicing stack update - followed by
KB3138612 - March WU Client update. (More information & reference URLs in
another MT post.)
Update: today on InfoWorld, "
KB 3185911 speeds up the Windows 7 scan for updates"