Strange behavior of Updates during recent installs

If you look at the Task Manager while the indicator is at 0%, you'll usually find that either TrustedInstaller or SVCHOST are using high CPU - this is because they are checking the integrity of files (but I'm not certain which files they are checking at this point!)
It may be that recent update downloads are also being checked - or they may have widened the checks to other parts of the system.

gregrocker said:

I tried that again yesterday, setting to choose Updates only. The first group installed and when I went back to Check for Updates it offered 72 which I selected and watched it stall at 0% Downloaded. Then I notice they are queued on the Shutdown button. Executed a Shutdown and all 72 installed - even though they had appeared not to be downloaded when I selected them!

Noel what do you know about that rollup? Is a rollup of hotfixes likely to smooth the way for rest of Updates, by installing it first?

I really have no idea - hopefully it would do, but it depends on how they do it.
They have two options, really.

1) a single mega-update, and a number of smaller ones
2) chaining the installs of each update into a logical sequence.

When they did a similar thing for Win ME, Win98SE and XP, they chose the second method (that was the famed Security Update disk that they pushed out in 2004 - it worked really well for most, but it had 4 months of heavy beta-testing from experts including many MVPs before they put it out!! - there were still a number of bugs in the final version but they could be got around by tweaking the script)

NoelDP said:

If you look at the Task Manager while the indicator is at 0%, you'll usually find that either TrustedInstaller or SVCHOST are using high CPU - this is because they are checking the integrity of files (but I'm not certain which files they are checking at this point!)
It may be that recent update downloads are also being checked - or they may have widened the checks to other parts of the system.

Just for information:

A hotfix for the Windows Update Agent is currently in development.

At its core this is a memory allocation issue, thus 64-bit Windows 7 computers will not see this error because the address space is effectively unlimited. They will, however, exhibit high memory and high CPU usage, possibly affecting performance. Note that x86 clients will also exhibit high memory usage (around 1.2-1.4GB).

Note that the article there is about WSUS - NOT ordinary Windows Updates.

WSUS is only intended for use in Domain server situations - but can also be used in other scenarios.

Here's my standard methodology for update installs on a new installation...


Note - between each of the below batches of updates, reboot at least once, even if the machine auto-rebooted during the updates. After teh update, do a new Check for Updates. Add any remaining updates or failed updates to the next batch.




1) Install all 'Security Update for Windows'
Reboot
Check for Updates
(some will have failed, and some new ones will have appeared)
2) Install the remaining/new 'Security Update for Windows'
Reboot
Check for Updates
3) Install all ordinary 'Update for Windows'
Reboot
Check for Updates
4) install updates for IE8 - but NOT IE 9/10/11
Reboot
Check for Updates
5) install all other updates EXCEPT .NET ones and IE9/10/11
Reboot
Check for Updates
repeat 5 until there's nothing left in the main window except the .NET and IE upgrades

6) Install all Security Updates for .NET - but nothing else
Reboot
Check for Updates
7) Install all other .NET updates
Reboot
Check for Updates
8) Install IE10 if offered - IE11 should wait if it's still an Optional update.
9) Install the IE10 updates, then install IE11 and update that.