No Windows Updates for 6 months..

castera

Not quite sure how this happened..

Bought a Toshiba laptop last April as professional refurb - arrived with Windows 7 Pro 64Bit, fully updated as at 4.4.16. Been working fine until a disk problem recently - all fixed thanks to help on here.

I've since been doing some tidying up and checking, and discovered that I've had no usual updates since it arrived! Update history shows regular updates at a rate of 2-3 per week, but I've just realised that they are all Defender Updates only, and that settings are on "let me choose .. etc".

It appears there are 28 important updates at 259MB waiting for me, but I'm really nervous about pressing the button. Are they (all) essential, how long might it take, and do I need to look out for any nasties like the old forced Win10 stuff?

Any guidance gratefully received.

welshbookworm

It depends on your internet speed
Pop the figures in this download calculator http://www.download-time.com/
and it will tell you how long.
Useful or not? You'll have to wait for someone more knowledgeable - sorry.

castera

Thanks, I'm only on about 11Mbits but it's not about download time - it's the time taken to do the actual updating that's concerning me. I've read of updates taking several hours to complete (and I'm guessing that's for regular stuff) so what would 6 months worth be :eek:

Don't want to start it off and be frozen out for days..

flashg67

2 possibilities strike me - 1. it's a genuine mistake by the vendor - so now you can untick some updates and install in stages, or 2. the install isn't a legitimate one and updates have been disabled hoping you won't notice.

Enabling them could cause you validation problems. I am a 'glass half empty' kind of person, but there's but only one way to find out and install them.

mac.d

You don't need to install them all at the one time. Keep the settings for windows to check for updates but let you choose when to install them. Then just click the check boxes next to 5-10 of the important updates and install them, then once they are done, run Windows Update and check for updates again, then select another batch of 5-10 (depending on their size), and so on. It will take longer overall but it also means you can check for any problems between updates.

Le_Kirk

You can always check what an update is supposed to do by clicking on it (single click) in the updates window and then, in the right hand side bar, click on "more information." Recent non-urgent updates have included unpronounceable countries that have decided to do away with summer time.

grumpycrab

Solution (and more info) @Microsoft forum...
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-update/windows-7-update-solution/f39a65fa-9d10-42e7-9bc0-7f5096b36d0c

castera

Thanks very much to all for responses.

I spent a lot of the weekend faffing (and learning) with not much success.

I first tried selecting just 5 smallish "Important" updates to install - it seemed to take forever and finally failed. Interestingly, Update history showed 9 failures for that date.

This morning I tried just one (KB3146706) which was declared successful, but after it rebooted everything slowed to a crawl (Task Manager showed huge activity - curiously on only 3 CPUs..)
I couldn't seem to make sense of it so eventually I uninstalled the update and performance returned to normal.

I then came on here to ask if I actually need these perishing updates at all, and found further 2 replies which really helped. Grumpycrab's link seems just the answer, and I will go and read up.

I'll report back later..

castera

Well that seemed to go much better - followed instructions and KB3172605 installed successfully. Laptop seems fine.

Reading further through the links was a real eye-opener regarding MS and their tactics. I'm leaning firmly towards Group "B" (my heart says Group "C" (W?) but don't think I'd have the time right now for that steepness of learning curve).

Sooo.. I've turned off Windows Update in Services, set Check to "never", and even opted out of CEIP Once I've caught up, I'm happy to check for updates myself and decide what & when - maybe with a little guidance from the experts on here.

Just to get me to that point however, a couple of questions please:-

1. Am I right in thinking that KB3172605 was the first of the "cumulative" monthly updates, and that it was July's? If so, should I need to worry about Aug & Sept, or will October's bring everything up to date?

3. Checking now for updates brings up a list of about 25 Security Updates dating from May - September. Should I be trying to install these, and if so then all of them sequentially, or just the latest?

Grateful as ever for your input.