Windows 7 64 Bit updates takes a long time.

The updates to Windows 7 is taking a long time. It has been installing update 7 for over 2 hrs. Please help......

Which update is it installing (has it completed yet?)

If it's installing Service Pack 1, this can take a few hours, depending on the state of your system - but any more than 3 hours would be highly unusual.

As Noel states, SP1 can take two or three hours to download, install and configure.

You'll also find that .NET Framework updates can take along time too.

You also need to check that updates such as Microsoft Security Essentials have completed their routine before you try and install more updates.

Why is this acceptable? Why do I have to upgrade to IE 8 then 9 then 10 then 11? How do you get it to go to 11 out of the gate? Are the security updates the same? After I downgraded to win 7 from the shipped win 8 (plus free upgrade to 8.1) I had to go through several hours of updates before the Service Pack 1 even showed up. Is there a way to cut to the quick and just catch up with one update?

In theory, it's possible to go direct from IE8 to IE11 - but I've often found that something gets in the way (possibly updates aren't available in the same way), and it's more certain to work properly if you carry out the intermediate steps.

As far as SP1 is concerned you could either have
1) downloaded and installed a copy of Windows with SP1 embedded, or
2) downloaded the fill SP1 pack and installed that as soon as you'd done the basic RTM install.

There is no easy way around installing the 100+ updates that have been installed since SP1 was released.


SP1 consists mostly of updates that have previously been released - by the time that it shows in Windows Updates, most of these updates have already been installed, and WU simply installs any remaining updates, and anything else that forms part of SP1 - it doesn't have to download everything all over again.