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Why is Windows Update working?



 
 
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  #1  
Old December 13th 17, 11:09 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
TimW
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5
Default Why is Windows Update working?

Despite having a desktop and a laptop with windows OEM serial stickers
on them, the last time I re installed Windows 7 Microsoft wouldn't
activate the OS on either one. Both are old machines and I think I had
used a pirate activation thing and they were black listed in some way.
the upshot was that I had windows7 installed but it refused to update in
any way. This was new MS policy I thought. They gave me a straight 'NO'
over the phone evn when I rang up with the correct serial.

It didn't bother me too much. It was around the time they were pushing
the whole world to move on to windows 10 but I was transitioning to
Linux Mint for different reasons already so W7 was a secondary OS on
dual boot only used occasionally for a couple of things I couldn't do
with linux.

But surprise! This week I started windows and it started updating. Not
sure if I was pleased or not because it took hours and had to be
rebooted three times, but is now fully updated again. Is this another
change in MS policy? Have they relented? What is going on here?

TW
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  #2  
Old December 13th 17, 03:31 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
philo
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4,807
Default Why is Windows Update working?

On 12/13/2017 4:09 AM, TimW wrote:
Despite having a desktop and a laptop with windows OEM serial stickers
on them, the last time I re installed Windows 7 Microsoft wouldn't
activate the OS on either one. Both are old machines and I think I had
used a pirate activation thing and they were black listed in some way.
the upshot was that I had windows7 installed but it refused to update in
any way. This was new MS policy I thought. They gave me a straight 'NO'
over the phone evn when I rang up with the correct serial.

It didn't bother me too much. It was around the time they were pushing
the whole world to move on to windows 10 but I was transitioning to
Linux Mint for different reasons already so W7 was a secondary OS on
dual boot only used occasionally for a couple of things I couldn't do
with linux.

But surprise! This week I started windows and it started updating. Not
sure if I was pleased or not because it took hours and had to be
rebooted three times, but is now fully updated again. Is this another
change in MS policy? Have they relented? What is going on here?

TW




I don't know but a while back, when working on Win7 machines, the update
process could take over 24 hours .

Recently I've noticed that it seems to be working OK.

Possibly now that folks are moving to Win10, the servers supplying Win7
updates are less over-loaded.
  #3  
Old December 14th 17, 03:53 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mr. Man-wai Chang
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,941
Default Why is Windows Update working?

On 13/12/2017 6:09 PM, TimW wrote:
Despite having a desktop and a laptop with windows OEM serial stickers
on them, the last time I re installed Windows 7 Microsoft wouldn't
activate the OS on either one. Both are old machines and I think I had
used a pirate activation thing and they were black listed in some way.
the upshot was that I had windows7 installed but it refused to update in
any way. This was new MS policy I thought. They gave me a straight 'NO'
over the phone evn when I rang up with the correct serial.


There are a few Win 7 updates that broke the update process. Can't
remember their numbers.

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  #4  
Old December 14th 17, 04:31 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Why is Windows Update working?

TimW wrote:
Despite having a desktop and a laptop with windows OEM serial stickers
on them, the last time I re installed Windows 7 Microsoft wouldn't
activate the OS on either one. Both are old machines and I think I had
used a pirate activation thing and they were black listed in some way.
the upshot was that I had windows7 installed but it refused to update in
any way. This was new MS policy I thought. They gave me a straight 'NO'
over the phone evn when I rang up with the correct serial.

It didn't bother me too much. It was around the time they were pushing
the whole world to move on to windows 10 but I was transitioning to
Linux Mint for different reasons already so W7 was a secondary OS on
dual boot only used occasionally for a couple of things I couldn't do
with linux.

But surprise! This week I started windows and it started updating. Not
sure if I was pleased or not because it took hours and had to be
rebooted three times, but is now fully updated again. Is this another
change in MS policy? Have they relented? What is going on here?

TW


You would need to know the mechanism being used.

http://techtoy.co.uk/pirating-window...the-right-way/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comm...der_vs_watfix/

It's possible your OS re-activated itself, using the
activator you loaded. If KMS checks every 180 days,
maybe your activator re-activated it ? It's also possible
it'll show as Not Genuine after the next time Windows
phones home or something.

You would need to consult with one of the sites that
invented this stuff, to get an opinion on "symptoms".

People used to brag about DAZ, as a means of bootstrapping
yourself to a Win10 Digital Entitlement. As with any "temporal"
topic, who really knows whether all the campers who did
that, are happy campers today.

Paul
  #5  
Old December 15th 17, 10:38 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Dominique
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 343
Default Why is Windows Update working?

philo crivait news
On 12/13/2017 4:09 AM, TimW wrote:

snip



I don't know but a while back, when working on Win7 machines, the update
process could take over 24 hours .

Recently I've noticed that it seems to be working OK.


There was a bug in WU, I had to manually install two specific updates to
fix it. I don't recall the KB numbers.
  #6  
Old December 15th 17, 11:37 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
s|b
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,496
Default Why is Windows Update working?

On Fri, 15 Dec 2017 21:38:24 -0000 (UTC), Dominique wrote:

There was a bug in WU, I had to manually install two specific updates to
fix it. I don't recall the KB numbers.


Shouldn't have been necessary since M$ fixed the problem without user
interaction. I didn't have to do anything for it to be fixed.

--
s|b
  #7  
Old December 16th 17, 01:47 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Dominique
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 343
Default Why is Windows Update working?

"s|b" crivait :

On Fri, 15 Dec 2017 21:38:24 -0000 (UTC), Dominique wrote:

There was a bug in WU, I had to manually install two specific updates to
fix it. I don't recall the KB numbers.


Shouldn't have been necessary since M$ fixed the problem without user
interaction. I didn't have to do anything for it to be fixed.


It's been some time now and it was faster than waiting for M$ to fix it.
I've waited for WU for over 24 hours without any result. After a few
searches, I found the two update fixes (KB3020369 and KB3172605) and after
installing them, Windows Update took a few seconds to find new updates.

I've recently reinstalled Win7 (fresh) and the first thing I did after was
to install SP1 and the two WU fixes even before going to WU and all went
well. WU found over 180 updates.
  #8  
Old December 16th 17, 03:45 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Why is Windows Update working?

Dominique wrote:
"s|b" crivait :

On Fri, 15 Dec 2017 21:38:24 -0000 (UTC), Dominique wrote:

There was a bug in WU, I had to manually install two specific updates to
fix it. I don't recall the KB numbers.

Shouldn't have been necessary since M$ fixed the problem without user
interaction. I didn't have to do anything for it to be fixed.


It's been some time now and it was faster than waiting for M$ to fix it.
I've waited for WU for over 24 hours without any result. After a few
searches, I found the two update fixes (KB3020369 and KB3172605) and after
installing them, Windows Update took a few seconds to find new updates.

I've recently reinstalled Win7 (fresh) and the first thing I did after was
to install SP1 and the two WU fixes even before going to WU and all went
well. WU found over 180 updates.


Microsoft never really fixed that bug, which has existed
from WinXP to Windows 10.

Microsoft is "married" to a certain kind of tracking for updates,
and even the Windows 7 to Windows 10 "cleanup" has not changed
that method. The wsusscn2.cab file is still getting bigger
and bigger (you can see a copy fetched if you install
Microsoft Baseline Security Adviser MBSA 2.3 and run a
scan), and tracks all the updates. It's the unscaleable
nature of the tracking method, that leads to long
delays.

Current Patch Tuesday updates to Windows 7 are "jumbo"
patches, the intention of which is to reduce the amount
of info that must be added to wsusscn2. Even a couple
researchers know which files/subsystems "kick off" the
long delay actions of Windows Update (win32k.sys updates,
atmfd, and some other gdm graphics thing?).

If your Windows Update gets stuck after installing '369
and '605, on some monthly update, you can use
catalog.update.microsoft.com to find the latest
Patch Tuesday file, and install the download
manually. Then, run Windows Update, and the window
should re-paint within 5 minutes. To do the update, you

1) Unplug the network cable.
2) Reboot the computer.
3) Double-click the .msu file you downloaded with the
Patch Tuesday update.
4) Reboot (to finish the install of it).
5) Plug in the network cable.

Not all Windows Update files are .msu, some are .cab,
but no reasonable person would be adding .cabs to WinXP
today, and the later OSes should have the cleaner .msu
format to use instead. Microsoft never went back and
repackaged the old .cab updates, to make them more
friendly. The .msu updates properly log themselves
in Windows Update even.

You can use MBSA 2.3 to get the KB number of the
latest Cumulative. That's one way to track it down.
There are some third party softwares, like Belarc
Advisor, which may hint at which update is missing
from your system. MBSA is similar to Windows Update
in the processing it does, except it doesn't get stuck
in a loop working out dependencies. If MBSA tells you
to download 77 files, on average about 2 files will
report "not appropriate for this system" when you
try to install them (that means the MBSA analysis
wasn't good enough, but since each .msu checks this
for itself, no harm is done by a less than stellar
analysis - the 2 errant updates merely waste
some of your personal time). But MBSA always seems to
have an answer in 5 minutes, whereas Windows Update looping
behavior (especially in Vista!), may never resolve in
reasonable time. Once the Vista Windows Update goes ito
a loop, it never comes back (I waited a day or two for it).

*******

Someone else reported that the problem with Windows
Update in this case, had to do with some other
file and some expiry date. The root cause of the
problem in this case, seems to have been different
than "normal". And who knows, Microsoft might actually
have fixed something for once. They will *never*
(double-bolded) fix how the current scheme works,
and as long as they're in the OS business, this
scheme will continue to live on. If they enter the
Linux ecosystem in a bold fashion some day, I can
see them dragging that scum-sucking method with them :-)

One of the reasons for the yearly Windows 10 updates, is
*not* to give you new toys to play with. It gives
an opportunity to truncate the dependency tree
of their inventory system. In other words, they patch
the whole OS, to prevent the WinXP-era behaviors
from re-surfacing in the form of Windows Update
spin-looping.

Paul
 




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