News Microsoft Says Windows Updates May Need up to 8 Hours to Complete

[Admin]

Windows devices miss out on updates because they're not connected for long enough, an MS blog post concludes

Microsoft Says Windows Updates May Need up to 8 Hours to Complete : Read more

 

[hotaru251]

imagine having to research why your update service isnt giving updates...

you freaking MADE the system and its coding...

 

[g-unit1111]

How about this Microsoft (and apologies for use of all caps) :

NO ONE LIKES HAVING TO UPDATE THEIR SYSTEM EVERY OTHER DAY!

Can we stop with the frequent updates already? It's infuriating!

 

[hushnecampus]

Do some things, like games, pause the update process?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

How about letting us DL the updates on our own schedule and installing it when we want.

Not waiting for your craptastic updater who takes forever to do anything?

 

[thepersonwithaface45]

imagine having to research why your update service isnt giving updates...

you freaking MADE the system and its coding...

You should look at the Halo infinite forums- They released a hot fix for a game mode called big team battle, sent it thru QA, it passed, then it went live-
For it to not work.
3 Months after launch and a major game mode is still broken. 500m budget, 6 year dev time-
Microsoft publisher-
wiln

 

[Soulsa]

How about letting us DL the updates on our own schedule and installing it when we want.

Not waiting for your craptastic updater who takes forever to do anything?

While the thought is definitely there I'm pretty sure hardly any would update then

 

[MasterMadBones]

imagine having to research why your update service isnt giving updates...

you freaking MADE the system and its coding...

Software development is a continuous process. It's impossible to have perfect code once you go over a couple hundred or thousand lines (depending on who you are), so you're always looking for what can be called "acceptable and expected" behaviour.

Windows Update itself works fine and without major issues for the most part. However, automatic updates apparently don't perform as well as expected from Microsoft, which is the reason for the investigation. Maybe the average user doesn't spend as much time online as expected, or their internet might be much slower than what they tested with. Using this data, they can find which areas should be attempted to improve on first.

 

[enilc]

How about this Microsoft (and apologies for use of all caps) :

NO ONE LIKES HAVING TO UPDATE THEIR SYSTEM EVERY OTHER DAY!

Can we stop with the frequent updates already? It's infuriating!

As long as you can get the bad actors out there to agree to only update their malware on a monthly basis?

 

[USAFRet]

Often seen around here:
"I don't want ANY updates. Ever! Because, reasons!!"

'Fine, as long as you keep your PC off the internet we all share'.

 

[g-unit1111]

As long as you can get the bad actors out there to agree to only update their malware on a monthly basis?

Yeah the bad thing with that is there's no easy solution. The frequent updates are annoying as hell but you can't not have them.

 

[Sippincider]

Two hours of continuous connectivity was required to get updates. It then took six hours after the release of the patch for a machine to update itself reliably.

Just when we thought nobody could out-fail Apple at a major software update (cough macOS 12 cough Xcode), Microsoft decides to enter the room...

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Personally, I would rather Microsoft go back to the previous Windows 7 and earlier system of induvial updates with quarterly update rollups.

 

[NatalieEGH]

Might MS not try:

1. Creating a download manager that tracks how much of a update has been downloaded, and regularly flushing cache and after verifying the data has been written establishing checkpoints. This would allow restart of the download at known locations.

2. Making the updates much smaller and only including in an update those components that are affected by other updates. That is to say release an update of xxxxxxx and because it provides an interface for yyyyyyy include it also, or rather include only the parts of yyyyyyy affected by the update to xxxxxxx. This will make for many more updates but each could be done quick and easily, possibly during system shutdown and system start up. If the updates do not require a reboot you might release have them execute in background. With this do the security updates first. As it would run in background except for those few updates that actually require a system restart it should be less annoying to customers.

3. Running two version of the OS on the customer computers during updating (include checkpoints). When a new update is being released copy the OS to OS-work. Apply the update to OS-work including checkpoints for restart as well as checksums on the most recent block of updates. When OS-work is finished updating and has been verified, notify the user that the new version of the OS would be available after the next reboot and ask in the customer wants to reboot immediately. Whenever the reboot takes place, switch the two directories and after verifying one last time, delete the old directory. Then connect to MS again to report completion of the process.

 

[Chung Leong]

Basically, your computer will spend more time serving Windows Update than serving you. The situation is ridiculous.

 

[USAFRet]

Basically, your computer will spend more time serving Windows Update than serving you. The situation is ridiculous.

Mine doesn't.

 

[Wolfshadw]

ROTFL!!!!

I just finished reading these comments only to find out I have an MS Update ready for install!

-Wolf sends

 

[CajunMoses]

In part, this kind of garbage is what drove me to abandon Windows and adopt Chromebooks. Chromebooks update every four weeks. The update occurs in the background and then just waits for your next restart to replace the older version. Restarting takes only a few seconds, similar to the amount of time that it takes for a sleeping Windows PC to "wake up." I have no choice but to use Windows at work, which is just fine because the IT group rolls out updates. For all the bellyaching and as truly bad as Windows is today, it was far, far worse in the past. It was a nearly unusable house of cards. It has improved exponentially every decade. But, alas, it's still pretty bad.

 

[Scooter70]

Why do they have to take so freaking long? 8 hours is ridiculous. I'm glad I mostly use Linux these days where updates are pretty much only limited by the speed of your internet connection.

 

[mhmarefat]

Literal spyware.

 

[bigdragon]

I'm not sure if Microsoft's update mechanism is to blame, or if potato computers or Comcasticly slow internet should take the blame for this one. I am inclined to blame service providers given the slow state of most US internet connections outside select cities with fiber.

What I do know is that a Microsoft Surface Pro 7 I use recently decided it no longer wanted to download updates...any updates. Metered connection settings, update sharing, and network connection settings all had zero impact. The troubleshooter also failed to fix anything. The solution? Create a new local user and update from that account. 8 hours isn't even enough time when your updater has these sort of basic problems, Microsoft.

 

[GeorgeOrwell]

It only took my laptop about 90 minutes to 'upgrade' to Windows 11.

It took about 40 minutes to revert back to Windows 10!

 

[dimwit_flathead]

I left Windows 20 years ago and OS X 10 years ago, and moved to Linux permanently. I update it whenever I please and when it breaks, I can fix it. Of course, you have to run a systemd-free distro like Artix, but that's another story....

 

[4freedomssake]

Do some things, like games, pause the update process?

Agreed.

 

[g-unit1111]

Might MS not try:

1. Creating a download manager that tracks how much of a update has been downloaded, and regularly flushing cache and after verifying the data has been written establishing checkpoints. This would allow restart of the download at known locations.

I like this idea. Especially having it run as a background process then restarting once all the updates have been completed. But having to spend 8 hours for an actual update is absolutely ludicrous.