Still 'Installing Update 186 of 197'

A clean install and several days of reboots and updates before the
computer becomes useable. Yesterday just when I thought I was getting to
the end of it Windows Update announced that it wanted to update itself
and then a vast number of new updates appeared marked as Important. Last
night I got the usual 'Do not Power Off' message and left it running but
thismorning it still hasn't completed it's routine.

Time to press and hold the power button I think? Fingers crossed.

Tim W

On 04/28/2015 04:55 AM, Tim w wrote:
A clean install and several days of reboots and updates before the
computer becomes useable. Yesterday just when I thought I was getting to
the end of it Windows Update announced that it wanted to update itself
and then a vast number of new updates appeared marked as Important. Last
night I got the usual 'Do not Power Off' message and left it running but
thismorning it still hasn't completed it's routine.

Time to press and hold the power button I think? Fingers crossed.

Tim W



If it still has not installed after sitting over night, you might as
well turn it off.


That's happened to me before and no harm was done, just had to install a
few more updates.

Tim w wrote:
A clean install and several days of reboots and updates before the
computer becomes useable. Yesterday just when I thought I was getting to
the end of it Windows Update announced that it wanted to update itself
and then a vast number of new updates appeared marked as Important. Last
night I got the usual 'Do not Power Off' message and left it running but
thismorning it still hasn't completed it's routine.

Time to press and hold the power button I think? Fingers crossed.

Tim W

You should be careful of Microsoft subsystems that
actively interfere/slow the update process.

For example, telling SearchIndexer to Pause, is not enough.
Go into the Administrator Services panel and disable
the service, so it stops starting, so it stops resuming
what it is doing.

Your AV should also be disabled (somehow), while the updates
run. This reduces the amount of additional file I/O,
as the AV scans everything the Updater is doing. Some AV
programs, allow disablement for 15 minute periods of time.
You may need to keep clicking that stupid feature. If you
don't have an AV installed at this point - you're lucky.

*******

In terms of Windows updates, they should be done in groups.
Don't let Windows pick the order.

At the very least, untick all the selection buttons, then
go through the list and select all the .NET related updates.
The reason for doing this, is so multiple runs of NGEN
will not occur. NGEN is an assembly compiler, that pre-compiles
..NET assemblies (Windows uses those) for "fast start". The
process is really stupid, and could also be done at runtime,
when an executable is run. So the thing that NGEN is doing,
can also be done in real time, and only when a binary is
executed.

Once all the .NET updates are out of the way, and the disk
has stopped grinding, now you can tick whatever you
consider to be the next set.

Typical AV programs, re-enable themselves after a reboot,
so expect to have to disable the AV more than once, if
doing updates in sets.

*******

Instead of powering off, maybe you still have control
of the machine ? In which case, you can remove anything
which is slowing down the update process.

As another example, if you use the Disk Cleanup function,
one of the optional tick boxes in there has to do with
cleaning up packages after they've been updated. This
causes a scanning process to run. It causes Disk Cleanup
to take an hour of run time. If you simply visit Windows Update,
that action causes Windows Update to kill the scan process started
by Disk Cleanup, and the Disk Cleanup will finish about
2 minutes later.

Windows is filled with idiotic things, that interfere
with other things. All in the name of "maintenance".

On my fancy new computer, I can have the poor thing
dropped to its knees at startup. Why ? A look in Task
Manager, shows zero CPU usage (or close to it). The machine
is not pegged. But Windows Defender could be doing continuous
I/O on the hard drive, and the machine is basically useless
until it stops. There is a trend here. The machine is
so fixated on maintenance, no amount of hardware prowess
leaves any responsiveness for what the user wants to
do. Your Windows Update example is just the tip of
the iceberg.

Paul

Tim w wrote:

A clean install and several days of reboots and updates before the
computer becomes useable. Yesterday just when I thought I was getting
to the end of it Windows Update announced that it wanted to update
itself and then a vast number of new updates appeared marked as
Important. Last night I got the usual 'Do not Power Off' message and
left it running but thismorning it still hasn't completed it's
routine.

Time to press and hold the power button I think? Fingers crossed.

Tim W

Past experience taught me, when applying updates, it is best to do them
in small groups; 3 or 4 at a time. That way, if any problems are
encountered, you can more easily find the culprit (the one causing the
system to hang or become unstable).

Doing a power button shut down usually does not cause problems, notice
the deliberate use of "Usually".

--
Sir_George