fresh install (Sept 2015), and checking for updates for 45min!!!!!

[giantbucket]

eh, ok, i've done a fresh re-install of Win7Pro64 on my machine (same stuff i've used before for the past 2-3 years). anyways, fresh install, and first thing i do is install mobo's LAN driver, so that i can then go online and download all updates and other drivers.

or can it? this thing has been sitting on "checking for updates" for LITERALLY 45mins. started at 12noon, it's now 12:45.

now, this is the first set of updates it's trying to find, but seriously? 45min just to CHECK for some? as far as i know, it hasn't even downloaded anything yet... this is also my second reinstall today - first one did the same, and i thought maybe the first install was a bit wonky.

so, um, what should i do? i can't even get my display to show 1920x1080 cuz it's still only equipped with basic Win7 code, which maxes out at 1400x1050 or something like that.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

I would try restarting if you haven't. It will take forever ( depending on connection speed, hardware etc. ) to update 7 after a clean install but it sounds hung up to me.

 

[Geekwad]

Yeah, if it appears to be hung, just restarting it is often enough to keep the process moving. You may notice that it applies an update in that case (either at shutdown or startup), and that allows it to advance.

Does depend on your connection speed though.......it takes a LONG time on some machines to get through that first batch of 200+ updates that WIN7 has to do to get back to 'updated'.

 

[madmatt30]

Is this a fresh install with no service packs mate ??
If so you'll be looking at 2 days before it's up to date.

Force the service pack updates from here

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/gg635126.aspx


You want the first download link & use 7zip or extractnow (both free) to unrar the iso file)

 

[giantbucket]

ok, progress at the 51min mark. it's Win7Pro64 SP1 to start with. i did some hotfix stuff, and right after it showed 200+ updates, over 1GB. so, ok, NOW it's going to download a gig of crap. sweet jesus...

 

[gangrel]

Yes. madmatt's 2 days is no joke. I did this not too long ago, and it was ugly. 7SP1 is old now. I think the core of the problem is the number of updates, and the complexity of the inter-dependencies. IIRC, it took 3-4 tries to get all the updates to install. For comparison, a clean install of 8.1 updates in 1 pass, and total time is probably about connection time plus an hour or so.

 

[madmatt30]

^ yup - its not the downloads that take the time (I'm on 120 meg connection)
Its the reboots, fails, rollbacks & retries that take the time.

 

[giantbucket]

ok, so by 9pm i fell asleep and had done MOST of the updates. still had to tack on a few more next morning, and fix graphics drivers since i'm running two very different cards.

i hope that this mobo / cpu never fail and need replacement, cuz if they do then another fresh install on different hardware is going to be ANOTHER massive pain...

 

[gangrel]

I realize you clearly don't want to move away from Win 7...but assuming you're not rushing to update, and that your current hardware's OK for a while...a year from now, staying with Win 7 is going to be really questionable. And if you wait, say, 2 years...but at that point, build a new system with reasonably new hardware (not latest and greatest) and you may need Win 10 to use all the features. So this might be the last time you'll have to go through this.

Then again, maybe not; they never released a service pack for 8.1. Service packs at least limit the number of updates you've got to install. They're also going to a downloadable delivery model, which *should* allow for updates to be incorporated into the baseline you install more quickly. This should lead to the same thing: fewer updates to install immediately.

 

[Geekwad]

ok, so by 9pm i fell asleep and had done MOST of the updates. still had to tack on a few more next morning, and fix graphics drivers since i'm running two very different cards.

i hope that this mobo / cpu never fail and need replacement, cuz if they do then another fresh install on different hardware is going to be ANOTHER massive pain...

This is where I usually make an image for each machine so if I do have to go through it again, I can just load the OS and then restore the backup.

 

[gangrel]

As long as the software remains reasonably fixed, that works. And even reloading a few apps is certainly better than a 2 day install process!

 

[giantbucket]

yeah, i typically do keep an image, but for some reason on this one i blew it away ahead of time. i think it was either because i wanted a fresh clean one, or because the user name i had set up was different. something benign in comparison to wasting a full Sunday on updates!

but if i need to replace the mobo+cpu, an image would be useless anyways...