windows update just seems to hang while checking.

[ilikefree]

after you do the sfc scan put this command into cmd and copy and paste the results into your next thread

findstr /c:"[SR]" %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log

 

[townsbg]

So far there doesn't seem to be any solution to the check updates problem other than letting it run. We can't make M$ speed up server response time. Lately I have been letting my Vista VM tell me when there are updates and I haven't had a problem with that. Last week it took longer to check for updates for 7. Also I've noticed a difference in check time for machines that are only set for updates for Windows and those set for all products.

 

[dersonpg]

I'm with the notebook turned on Saturday (20 Feb ) so far ( 22 Feb ) . For more than 24 hours I try to update my view and I can not . The machine is in an infinite loop " looking for updates ... " . I researched on the internet and saw that many users of Vista and Windows 7 are facing the same problem. The complaint of many is that MS is focusing all the speed of update and upgrade servers to Windows 10...

 

[Teknoskillz]

Thanks to lmacri , on that last post very informative and I gave + reputation credit.

Meanwhile,Im still dubious MS is really messing with the bw on the servers because my Vista Ultimate 64 bit desktop never ever has had this "delay" / timeout issue. Also there was a tool I downloaded, forgot what it was called, and the error it gave was basicly a "winsock" type error, which means the transport mechanism needing to create the connection in the first place is not taking place. To me that sounds more like whats going on there with my laptop. It also happens to have the most problems with /scannow in that not all the files are able to be repaired. However I believe running it from the Cd itself , may resolve those issues, however, been so long since I needed that CD, forgot where I put it - lol.

@ Ilikefree , thanks, however I was advised not to make this into a scf type thread, so I wil try PM'ing you the link to the cbslog. I had already zipped it up days ago and told Spyhunter support to look at it, however they said "not enough information submitted to investigate issue" or something to that effect - heh.

after you do the sfc scan put this command into cmd and copy and paste the results into your next thread

findstr /c:"[SR]" %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log

 

[Vistaar]

Im still dubious MS is really messing with the bw on the servers because my Vista Ultimate 64 bit desktop never ever has had this "delay" / timeout issue.

Yeah, I noticed back in August that this thread is almost exclusively 32-bit (see pages 2 and 3). Without re-reading 8 rather redundant pages, I think there have been only two complaints involving 64-bit Vista. My presumption has been that 64-bit systems have higher specs, particularly RAM. If you would like to experiment, try reducing your Vista Ultimate system to 2 GB before March Patch Tuesday.

My system is pretty high-spec for 32-bit Vista. I find this updating issue very annoying and time-consuming, but not as alarming as some of the other posters. Then again, the original poster also had a Q6600, and he was sufficiently alarmed to reinstall Vista. Like Imacri, there are no integrity violations when I run sfc /scannow, so that is not the cause. BTW those like myself who use Windows Media Center as PVR have had considerable difficulties downloading TV guide data from Microsoft since late July, which coincidentally was when Windows 10 was released. However that issue has improved.

 

[Teknoskillz]

Hrm, interesting.

As a "noob" I didnt know you had separate areas for 32 and 64 bit. But it makes sense as they are structured much differently. I did not really think the Win update mechanics would be that much different though, but I suppose there could be differences.

Im an electronic hardware tech by trade, so I understand what you are saying about RAM, but I would think the pagefile ought to offset that a bit if it really were an issue...or at best slow down the update process alot, but I dont beleive it would cause a timeout unless there was alot of junk soaking up resources like pups etc.

The laptop Issue with Win update here on my 32 bit pc seems to exactly coincide with the timing of some very nasty malware , otherwise the updates have been flawless previous to that, so I remain convinced something has gotten in there, extremely hard to isolate save for maybe the sfc.

I mentioned Spyhunter before, and it had found some threats that regenerate on boot, and it did actually interupt the boot process on a 1 time basis just to eradicate them, but its possible the issue is deeper than the fix they are implementing. My 64 bit Vista had way more threats than the 32 bit machine, however none of them were in as deeply (to my knowledge) as whatever is in the 32 bit machine right now. Believe it or not the 64 bit machine has 1000+ threats, mostly pups that SPyhunter removed. Was hard to believe I had that much crap soaking up resources, but other than very slow boot times, and occasional browser hijacking, which was more easily fixed, the integrity seemed basicly ok. I did suspect however these pups were probably running brute force checks on passwords, because my paypal pw got hacked for the first time ever, which made me realize something was getting very wrong. My Skype pw also got hacked but I so rarely use Skype it was not a big problem.

Its really too bad VIsta is gonna hit EOL in about a year, despite the bad reviews seems to be a sorta decent version of Windows , despite the pup problems. Not to go too far O/T....

My presumption has been that 64-bit systems have higher specs, particularly RAM. If you would like to experiment, try reducing your Vista Ultimate system to 2 GB before March Patch Tuesday.

 

[townsbg]

Hrm, interesting.

As a "noob" I didnt know you had separate areas for 32 and 64 bit. But it makes sense as they are structured much differently. I did not really think the Win update mechanics would be that much different though, but I suppose there could be differences.

Technically we don't have 64-bit and 32-bit sections of the forum which is what this paragraph implies (or did I read you wrong). Vistaar was pointing out that the complaints in this thread have been primarily for 32 bit systems due to an inadequate amount of ram.

Thanks to lmacri , on that last post very informative and I gave + reputation credit.

Meanwhile,Im still dubious MS is really messing with the bw on the servers because my Vista Ultimate 64 bit desktop never ever has had this "delay" / timeout issue. Also there was a tool I downloaded, forgot what it was called, and the error it gave was basicly a "winsock" type error, which means the transport mechanism needing to create the connection in the first place is not taking place. To me that sounds more like whats going on there with my laptop. It also happens to have the most problems with /scannow in that not all the files are able to be repaired. However I believe running it from the Cd itself , may resolve those issues, however, been so long since I needed that CD, forgot where I put it - lol.

You should create your own thread for this issue.

 

[VFN]

I'll just add the obvious: If so many Vista users are encountering Updates delays/troubles of some sort that would evidence a problem on their end not ours.

 

[Vistaar]

Believe it or not the 64 bit machine has 1000+ threats, mostly pups that SPyhunter removed.

I certainly do not believe it, but you have convinced me that Spyhunter is a PUP - which has nothing to do with Windows update problems.

 

[lmacri]

I already stated this in post # 20, but it's probably worth repeating. The amount of time that Checking for updates... hangs during a Windows Update on my machine is directly proportional to the number of updates available for download - the higher the number of updates the longer the hang. Since Aug 2015 I've only seen Checking for updates... hang for long periods of time when Microsoft releases a large batch of updates on the second Tuesday (Patch Tuesday) of every month.

Here's my CPU consumption for this month's Feb 2016 Patch Tuesday updates that I ran on 10-Feb-2016. My entire Windows Update session required 110 min to run from start to finish (the re-boot is displayed as a dark grey band at the far right of the image), which included my monthly Malicious Software Removal Tool malware scan. The initial Checking for updates... phase ran for 80 min before it reported that 13 important updates (Vista, IE9, MS Office, .NET Framework and Malicious Software Removal Tool of Feb 2016) were available for download. During this Checking for updates... hang svchost.exe constantly consumed ~50% of my CPU (i.e., complete saturation of one of my Intel Duo cores) and Process Explorer showed that the Windows Update service wuauserv was responsible for all that CPU activity.



I ran a manual Windows Update today on 23-Feb-2016 and the entire session took under 20 min. Checking for Updates... ran only 10 min before it reported that 1 optional update for Vista (KB3118401 - Update for Universal C Runtime) was available for download.



Other users like Vistaar (post # 14) and VFN (post # 75) have also noted that the Checking for updates... phase of Windows Update completes relatively quickly on their Vista machines when a small number of updates are found.
------------
32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox 44.0.2 * NIS 2014 v. 21.7.0.11 * MBAM Premium 2.2.0
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

 

[ilikefree]

Thanks to lmacri , on that last post very informative and I gave + reputation credit.

Meanwhile,Im still dubious MS is really messing with the bw on the servers because my Vista Ultimate 64 bit desktop never ever has had this "delay" / timeout issue. Also there was a tool I downloaded, forgot what it was called, and the error it gave was basicly a "winsock" type error, which means the transport mechanism needing to create the connection in the first place is not taking place. To me that sounds more like whats going on there with my laptop. It also happens to have the most problems with /scannow in that not all the files are able to be repaired. However I believe running it from the Cd itself , may resolve those issues, however, been so long since I needed that CD, forgot where I put it - lol.

@ Ilikefree , thanks, however I was advised not to make this into a scf type thread, so I wil try PM'ing you the link to the cbslog. I had already zipped it up days ago and told Spyhunter support to look at it, however they said "not enough information submitted to investigate issue" or something to that effect - heh.

Yes you should start a new thread.
I would not use Spyhunter just now as I have heard they find problems for free, but ask for payment to repair them.
Let us see if we can fix your problem for free

 

[townsbg]

I already stated this in post # 20, but it's probably worth repeating. The amount of time that Checking for updates... hangs during a Windows Update on my machine is directly proportional to the number of updates available for download - the higher the number of updates the longer the hang. Since Aug 2015 I've only seen Checking for updates... hang for long periods of time when Microsoft releases a large batch of updates on the second Tuesday (Patch Tuesday) of every month.

Here's my CPU consumption for this month's Feb 2016 Patch Tuesday updates that I ran on 10-Feb-2016. My entire Windows Update session required 110 min to run from start to finish (the re-boot is displayed as a dark grey band at the far right of the image), which included my monthly Malicious Software Removal Tool malware scan. The initial Checking for updates... phase ran for 80 min before it reported that 13 important updates (Vista, IE9, MS Office, .NET Framework and Malicious Software Removal Tool of Feb 2016) were available for download. During this Checking for updates... hang svchost.exe constantly consumed ~50% of my CPU (i.e., complete saturation of one of my Intel Duo cores) and Process Explorer showed that the Windows Update service wuauserv was responsible for all that CPU activity.

View attachment 29275

I ran a manual Windows Update today on 23-Feb-2016 and the entire session took under 20 min. Checking for Updates... ran only 10 min before it reported that 1 optional update for Vista (KB3118401 - Update for Universal C Runtime) was available for download.

View attachment 29276

Other users like Vistaar (post # 14) and VFN (post # 75) have also noted that the Checking for updates... phase of Windows Update completes relatively quickly on their Vista machines when a small number of updates are found.
------------
32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox 44.0.2 * NIS 2014 v. 21.7.0.11 * MBAM Premium 2.2.0
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

I think that it also has to do with the number of products that it has to check for especially if you have office installed. There is a simple solution. Just wait for Windows to tell you about updates.

 

[lmacri]

I'll just add the obvious: If so many Vista users are encountering Updates delays/troubles of some sort that would evidence a problem on their end not ours.

Hi VFN:

I agree. Affected users have been posting in this thread for several months now that the only known workaround for this problem is to leave Windows Update running, sometimes for well over an hour, until Checking for updates... reports that updates are available for download.

However, that doesn't bring us any closer to explaining why so many Vista users suddenly saw this problem start in late 2015 or whether this is something that should be fixed by Microsoft (e.g. via a patch for the Windows Update Client for Vista as they did for Win 7 with KB3050265).
------------
32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox 44.0.2 * NIS 2014 v. 21.7.0.11 * MBAM Premium 2.2.0
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

 

[Teknoskillz]

Dont sound like the MS company that it use to be then. I have used Win sinca as far back as '95 and only one other time with XP did something like that happen and it was fixed by clearing the update cache manually.

Sorry for being kinda O/T, but to me it sounds like MS has come to an end as a good OS company. Though I know people who say 10 is great and free, I dont believe you really get anything for free in life, there has to be a catch down the road somewhere. So most likely I will be heading into Linux...which is also free but they seem to have a more motivated manpower and resources ability than does MS. Again, sorry for the off topic comments.

Hi VFN:
I agree. Affected users have been posting in this thread for several months now that the only known workaround for this problem is to leave Windows Update running, sometimes for well over an hour, until Checking for updates... reports that updates are available for download.

 

[ilikefree]

Hi VFN:

I agree. Affected users have been posting in this thread for several months now that the only known workaround for this problem is to leave Windows Update running, sometimes for well over an hour, until Checking for updates... reports that updates are available for download.

However, that doesn't bring us any closer to explaining why so many Vista users suddenly saw this problem start in late 2015 or whether this is something that should be fixed by Microsoft (e.g. via a patch for the Windows Update Client for Vista as they did for Win 7 with KB3050265).
------------
32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox 44.0.2 * NIS 2014 v. 21.7.0.11 * MBAM Premium 2.2.0
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

Since they started downloading Windows 10 as part of Windows Update I thought.
Maybe all spare bandwidth is being used to push Win.10
Rather large downloads too I might add.

 

[Vistaar]

I was over at Seven Forums looking for reports of problems with the new MSE update, and saw this: Windows Update - Windows 7 Help Forums. Probably just the tip of the iceberg.

 

[matt4x4]

Just dealt with this issue now.

I had 196 updates on a fresh install onto a SSD HD, would hang on 80'ish update, so I waited several hours and it wouldnt progress. I also let it run last night when I went to bed. Woke up and it was running my desktop. This morning I turned off computer and restarted, even though it says "DONT DO IT" I did it twice, when it would hang on an update, but it worked.

It seems it runs in the background with no notifications until the end, then I get an icon at the bottom right panel for a restart. Restart and windows goes through its updating motions putting it in the o/s.

That was my expirience today and last night.

 

[townsbg]

I have had problems installing all of the updates at once on a new install so I have started dividing them up. For example I might do all of the windows updates, then all of the security updates, office updates, etc.

 

[ilikefree]

Today I installed 16 updates and it took 12 minutes from when I clicked Check for updates
I had to disable private firewall before it would allow them to go through though so some tweaking needed there.

 

[Cammygirl192]

This is how I got a super clean install last time around,
http://www.vistax64.com/general-dis...e-think-ms-really-do-want-kill-off-vista.html

It wouldn't surprise me but I'm not sure why they don't just force-upgrade everyone to Windows 10 if they want to kill it off so badly.