windows update just seems to hang while checking.

[lmacri]

Hi GradeAbra:

Since tomorrow is Patch Tuesday (i.e., the 2nd Tuesday of the month), I would suggest waiting for a few days until other users in this thread who have already installed KB3145739 have a chance to run their May 2016 Patch Tuesday updates and report back to let others know if this update actually solved the problem with Windows Update hanging at "Checking for updates...". If KB3145739 does in fact fix the problem for other users then you can download and install this update directly from the one of the following links on the Microsoft Download Center, re-boot, and then see if a manual Windows Update runs faster on your own machine.

For 32-bit Vista SP2: Security Update for Windows Vista (KB3145739)
For 64-bit Vista SP2: Security Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB3145739)
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox v46.0.1 * NIS v21.7.0.11 * MBAM Premium v2.2.1

 

[townsbg]

GradeAbra this has been going on since at least August as you can see from this thread and if I am right that was the month after 10 came out. As of now there is no proven solution except to wait it out and keep trying. Personally I am going to give it about a week before trying myself. I'm in no hurry.

 

[Vista1972]

May 2016 - Patch Tuesday Results

KB3145739 wasn't the ultimate fix for slow windows updates...at least for me!

Before running today's update, I checked to see if there was another Win32k elevation of privilege update and there was: kb3153199 (I downloaded the standalone file)

I chose to update the laptop first:

• opened windows update and clicked check for updates (even though it's set to check automatically)
• after 30-35 minutes, I stopped windows update using the services console
• I installed KB3153199 standalone update and rebooted the PC
• opened windows update and clicked check for updates again, 19 updates were found in 20-25 minutes
• installed the updates and rebooted. Checked again for updates, none - 5 minutes

The desktop:

• After starting the PC, I stopped windows update using the services console.
• I installed KB3153199 standalone update and rebooted the PC
• opened windows update and clicked check for updates for the first time, 19 updates were found in 22 minutes.
• Installed the updates and rebooted. Checked again for updates, same as laptop, none - about 5-10 minutes.

I don't know if there's a connection with installing the Win32k standalone update first that results in improved update checking speed or just coincidence? It seems to have worked for me in April and with today's updates.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I'm a long time member of sister forums on this site, but this is my first post on the Vista section.

My primary machine (Windows 7) is being rebuilt, so a couple of days ago I fired up my backup Vista Home Premium 32 bit Service Pack 2 PC, which had not been started in over 3 years. It's a Core 2 Duo E6600, with 4 GB of RAM. Plenty fast enough for a backup.

I did a little housekeeping and maintenance and came to this Windows Update issue.

After fiddling and researching for the last 24 hours, I need to know if the following is typical and has no immediate solution:

I started Windows Update late last night. It took about 10 hours to tell me that I had 130 important and 10 optional updates.

My WU settings are to do the minimum--don't download anything, don't install anything, don't show me updates for other products.

After seeing the list of 130 important updates, I said "download and install all of them". I know this is not the best practice, but thought I'd try it as I had not yet seen this thread.

That ran for maybe 3 hours with no noticeable progress. I cancelled out.

I began researching and found this thread. I read most of the posts.

I manually installed KB3153199 and KB3145739. Eventually they installed, but the search for the update after I double-clicked the msu file took a half hour or more.

I turned off and restarted Windows Update Service a time or two.

After doing the above, I selected just 1 very small update from Windows Update and attempted to download and install it.

This single small update eventually installed after perhaps 2 hours, possibly indicating WU "works" if you have unlimited patience and can do it in many batches over several days or weeks?

I'm now attempting one more single update--medium sized--10 mb.

Am I about where you guys are at and have I done pretty much all I can do?

Has anyone left a PC running for 3 or 4 days to see if anything happens or have you all given up after 24 hours or less?

Any further suggestions?

I'm not furious about this since this is a very very rarely used machine, but it's not confidence inspiring and more of what I have come to expect since Win 10 was released last July.

 

[townsbg]

With that many updates you might want to break them up. For example group the security updates, and then the hotfixes and other windows updates, .net updates, office updates, etc. Working from a fresh install (or one not booted in quite some time) it's my option that that method works the best. I'm not sure if 10 hours should be considered typical however users seem to have different experiences since 10 came out especially on patch tuesday. Perhaps you could give it a few days as well.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Townsbg:

Since my original post 3 hours ago, I've been able to update one more item from the list of 130. And I'm working on a third right now.

So, maybe I could do 5 in my typical 16 waking hours per day--one at a time. If the current one finishes in the next couple of hours, I may try to do 6 or 8 while I'm asleep, although I usually turn PCs off at night.

Am I correct that I seem to have applied due diligence as far as you know and that there is no known solution or action I can reasonably take?

I also ran sfc /scannow. No errors reported.

I'd say maybe 1 chance in 50 this is not a known issue at Microsoft and that they have little to no interest in resolving it--it's apparently been going on for 6 months or more. Prod, prod, prod, get off the antique and be assimilated into the Wonderful World Of Windows 10.

 

[townsbg]

If the suggested hot fixes didn't work then I don't know of anything else except to try another day. I don't know if M$ knows of this issue or not but I agree that they likely don't care. We really don't know what's causing it or what the difference is between those systems that have issues and those that don't. As you can see there is all kinds of speculation on this forum alone. I personally haven't had any problems until last month but for me Vista is only a virtual machine I don't use a lot with limited resources but I have a more powerful processor than yours. Perhaps that is the difference but as of yet we don't know the cause or solution. I think that maybe we should start tallying our processors to see if there are any similarities. I have a 3.2 ghz dual core I3. When I do updates Windows reports cpu utilization at 50% (one core) however the host computer reports only 25% utilization so I hardly notice the increased demand.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Update: I'm fully updated with all of the important and optional updates. I deliberately rejected maybe 5 updates all told--stuff that pertained to Russian language, domains, and remote desktop. I asked for 35 security updates late last night and they finished within 3 or 4 hours while I slept. I then split up the remainder of about 90 into 3 groups of 30 and each of those groups completed within an hour or so. I don't know if the increase in speed was due to yesterday being Patch Tuesday or if some of the earlier updates I did somehow facilitated the later ones. FedEx just delivered the motherboard for my main PC rebuild. If it isn't defective, I should be back on Windows 7 in the next day or two. If not, I may return here. And of course I can't say what might happen for future updates.

 

[lmacri]

I ran my May 2016 Patch Tuesday updates today (Thurs, May 12th) and can confirm that last month's KB3145739 update did not fix my problem. The initial "Checking for updates..." phase took just under 4 hours this month, with svchost.exe constantly consuming ~50% of my CPU (i.e., complete saturation of one of my Intel dual cores). The Windows Update (WU) service wuauserv accounted for all that CPU consumption by the svchost.exe process.

Once WU finally reported that 16 updates were available (45 MB in total for Vista, IE9, MS .NET Framework 4.5.2, MS Office) the download and installation phases ran normally and completed in about 25 min. As usual, the most time-consuming installation was this month's May 2016 Malicious Software Removal Tool scan by mrt.exe, which took about 10-15 min. The KB3153199 (MS16-062: Security Update for Windows Kernel-Mode Drivers) update mentioned <here> by Vista1972 was one of the 16 updates automatically delivered this month by WU.

My May 2016 Patch Tuesday updates are shown in the image below, with downloads and installations occurring between the 35 and 10 min marks. The dark grey band at the 5 min mark was the system restart to finish the installation.


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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox v46.0.1 * NIS v21.7.0.11 * MBAM Premium v2.2.1

 

[lmacri]

May 2016 - Patch Tuesday Results

KB3145739 wasn't the ultimate fix for slow windows updates...at least for me!

Before running today's update, I checked to see if there was another Win32k elevation of privilege update and there was: kb3153199 (I downloaded the standalone file)...

I don't know if there's a connection with installing the Win32k standalone update first that results in improved update checking speed or just coincidence? It seems to have worked for me in April and with today's updates.

According to the Win 7 users commenting on the AskWoody.com article Windows 7 update scans taking forever? KB 3153199 may solve the problem, downloading and installing these win32k.sys updates from the Microsoft Download Center every month can "trick" Windows Update into running your Patch Tuesday update faster, but it's only a temporary solution and the problem will return the next month. Woody Leonhard posted a link to Search for Windows Updates takes forever? - A possible solution that tracks the recommended win32k.sys updates (both Win 7 and Vista) that must be installed each successive month before running the Patch Tuesday updates. From the author of that webpage:

"The term 'solution' might be a little bit exaggerated, since the following HowTo only tries to make sure that the Update Agent doesn't need to check all updates, so the check for new updates is done faster. Futhermore, it's only a temporary solution; most likely the issue will appear again with the next Patchday."

On my Vista machine, "Checking for updates..." usually completes in 3 or 4 hours during my Patch Tuesday updates so at this point it's just as easy for me to start a manual Windows Update and leave my machine alone for a few hours. However, this manual pre-install of win32k.sys updates might be a viable option for other users in this thread if they find that their Patch Tuesday updates won't download in a reasonable amount of time.
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox v46.0.1 * NIS v21.7.0.11 * MBAM Premium v2.2.1

 

[Vista1972]

pre-install of win32k.sys updates might be a viable option for other users in this thread if they find that their Patch Tuesday updates won't download in a reasonable amount of time.

Yeah...until a real solution is found this is now my new protocol for patch Tuesday!

I had three Windows 7 machines to update this month. I updated two without the standalone update - both completed checking for updates within 30-40 minutes. The pre-installation of KB3153199 on the remaining machine resulted in WU checking time reduced to 4 minutes!

I don't know what changes when you install this update first and then check for updates but it definitely seems to move things along.

Also, the reason why I stopped my first Vista machine and applied the standalone update this month was due to the windowsupdate.log showing that "getting featured update notifications. fincludedDismissed = true No featured updates available." was in a loop for over twenty minutes. After applying the standalone update, WU completed checking within 20 couple minutes.

It's crazy that Microsoft won't correct this or at least acknowledge the issue at hand!

 

[townsbg]

I did updates on my Vista VM yesterday. The check probably took 2 hours (I wasn't at my computer for most of it) however the download/install went smoothly and quickly enough.

 

[GradeAbra]

Hi,
So has the problem been solve yet? Till now i still cannot update.

 

[Gwaihir]

I haven't read through the entire 16 pages of this thread but from what I've seen my experience is pretty typical and I'd say it's been going on for a lot longer than six months - for me anyway. As a reasonably proficient computer user - I've been working with them in one form or another since the early 70's - but one who doesn't profess to understand the technical intricacies of Windows I just want the damn thing to do what it's supposed to without having to resort to special measures.

I have my WU set to notify me when updates are available so when I click to download and install I'd really like it to just do it, but like many, if not most, on here I'm finding it necessary to leave the machine for a long time time before anything happens. The latest download took around two and a half hours before it started. After completion and reboot WU advised Check for Updates. which I did. 40 minutes later it still hasn't completed.

Sorry but I think this stinks! Microsoft must know about it and clearly are not interested.

For the record I'm running Vista Home Premium Version 6.0 (Build 6002 : Service Pack 2) on an Acer Aspire 5735 laptop with a Core 2 duo T6400 2GHz processor, 4GB DDR2 RAM and 500GB HD (not that the machine spec will have any bearing on this, other than the time it takes to actually install the updates).

I'm not looking for any advice on this as I can clearly see that this is a general problem. I just wanted to vent my frustration and tell Micro$oft that they suck!!

Check for updates still hasn't completed after another ten minutes . . . . . .

Edit: Two hours and counting . . . . . . .

Further edit: Decided to Kill it after four hours!!!!

 

[townsbg]

Hi,
So has the problem been solve yet? Till now i still cannot update.

As of yet there is no known solution at least one that has been proven to be effective and persistant. I agree with gwaihir that M$ likely does know and seemingly doesn't care. Why would they since they are dropping support in less than a year. What I find even more frustrating is that I am having more problems with updating 7 (for 2 months in a row now) yet 7 will be receiving updates for almost 4 more years-45 more patching cycles to be exact-which IMO it is way too early for users to experience the same issue. I don't know what 8 users are experiencing but to me it seems like they only care about 10. Yet I wonder how much of an impact office has on this after all on my 2008/2008r2 VMs I had no problem at all installing updates. However office is almost as old as windows so I am baffled.

 

[Kayla77]

Patience is a virtue. After not checking for updates for approximately 2 months, it was hanging for the first time ever. I was forced to shut down as it was eating through my ram and making everything unresponsive. After one of those temporary profile messages, I restarted twice, got my old profile back and tried to update once more.

It took over 5 hours but once it notified me of 19 updates, it was very quick to download. It is only at 1 of 19 for installation. I'm crossing my fingers. I guess I was lucky that this is the first time it's happening to me. I've had issues with updates but never this one.

ETA: 18/19 installed successfully.... I'll take it.

 

[Vista1972]

What I find even more frustrating is that I am having more problems with updating 7 (for 2 months in a row now) yet 7 will be receiving updates for almost 4 more years-45 more patching cycles to be exact-which IMO it is way too early for users to experience the same issue.

Read this today:
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com...17/simplifying-updates-for-windows-7-and-8-1/

Would've been nice if this was available for Vista say 5 years ago!

 

[GradeAbra]

Hi,

Any news regarding the update yet? I am still not able to update.

 

[lmacri]

Any news regarding the update yet? I am still not able to update.

Hi GradeAbra:

Did you try the workaround suggested in post # 150 to install any of the five Windows kernel-mode driver (Win32k.sys) updates listed on Dalai's webpage Search for Windows Updates takes forever? - A possible solution that are currently missing on your computer. If you managed to install your April 2016 Patch Tuesday updates last month you should only have to pre-install one missing update from the Microsoft Download Center - KB3153199 - before running Windows Update. Here are a few Vista users who reported this temporary workaround significantly reduced the time "Checking for updates..." ran during their May 2016 Windows Updates:

copiman: Current tips on updates
Ichabod22: Vista Windows update hangs with "checking for updates"
SorinCas: Windows Vista Won't Install New Updates After SP2 Installed

The only other solution I know is to turn off automatic Windows Updates [Windows Update | Change settings | Important updates | Never check for updates (not recommended)], re-boot your computer, and then start a manual Windows Update and leave your computer alone until "Checking for updates..." reports that updates are available for download. The more updates pending the longer "Checking for updates...." will hang, so if you haven't successfully installed updates for a few months this could take several hours.
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox v46.0.1 * NIS v21.7.0.11 * MBAM Premium v2.2.1

 

[GradeAbra]

^^Hello, i tried manual updating it but still cannot get through.