Windows 7 service packs

Layback Bear · 30 Jan 2016

LMiller7 said:

Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 would be considered an essential update. You need a really compelling reason not to do this update. The belief (faulty) that updates slow down your computer is not such a reason.

Support for Windows 7 without SP1 ended on April 9 2013. Not having SP1 installed puts your computer at a much higher risk of malware infections. SP1 fixes many problems in the OS. Few members of this forum would be inclined to help with a windows 7 computer without SP1. The problem may be caused by it's lack.

Microsoft is devoting a great deal of time, effort, and money to creating updates for Windows 7. They must also devote a great deal of physical resources and pay for the very high bandwidth required to distribute these updates. For all of this Microsoft is receiving zero revenue. Why go to all that trouble just to slow down your computer?

My experience with Windows service packs and updates goes back to Windows 98 days and has been almost entirely positive. Very few problems and not one case where a service pack or update caused a slowdown.

mohab · 01 Feb 2016

Layback Bear, Where did I get the idea that updates slow down the PC? All the unnecessary/ irrelevant updates that Windows XP used to download, they used to really slow it down as the processor needs to deal with all these newly installed files

LMiller7 · 01 Feb 2016

Once they have been installed files (even in large numbers) have zero impact on CPU usage. How can you really know that Windows updates were responsible for your issues?

UsernameIssues · 01 Feb 2016

LMiller7,
Maybe I'm looking at it wrong, but I figure that most patched code means having more code added to the old flawed code. Every time that the code runs, the added code must run too. Of course this is not true every single patch; but, I would guess that it is true a lot of the time.

Millions of lines of added/patched code probably does slow things down. I just do not know if it is noticeable. I don't see a slow down on my hardware (unpatched vs. patched - with no 3rd party software installed). Maybe the OP will tell us if a slow down is measurable on his hardware.

As you mentioned: these patches are already expensive to create/distribute. Why would MS go to the added expense to optimize the code for speed?

Layback Bear · 01 Feb 2016

Title of thread.

Windows 7 service packs

I know of no proof that Windows 7 SP-1 slows down a computer system that is designed to run Windows 7.
A billion or so people use Windows 7 SP-1 and only a few state that it slows things down.
I have not run Windows 7 with out SP-1 for years. I did install Windows 7 on one of my systems before SP-1 came out.
If SP-1 slowed that old system down, I sure don't remember it doing so.

So to answer the question.
No SP-1 does not slow computers down that are designed for Windows 7.
In my opinion SP-1 is necessary to enjoy everything that Windows 7 has to offer.

That being said, I'm sure someone has posted somewhere that Aunt Mable's computer slows down on the last Friday of every week when I installed SP-1 on her computer.
Poor Aunt Mable.

LMiller7 · 01 Feb 2016

This thread has gone off track into discussion not relevant to the original question. It has gone from that of SP 1 to discussion of updates and patches as if they were the same thing. They are not. A service pack does not consist of yet more patches but clean new versions of the system files with the original problems fixed. If the old patches caused a slowdown (which I doubt is significant) then SP 1 should improve performance.

UsernameIssues · 01 Feb 2016

LMiller7 said:

This thread has gone off track into discussion not relevant to the original question. It has gone from that of SP 1 to discussion of updates and patches as if they were the same thing. They are not. A service pack does not consist of yet more patches but clean new versions of the system files with the original problems fixed. If the old patches caused a slowdown (which I doubt is significant) then SP 1 should improve performance.

I was assuming that the OP had not installed every update that SP1 installs.
If the computer has not been patched (e.g. fresh install via golden media), then applying SP1 will apply many updates.

I would encourage the OP to install SP1 and most other updates... but I understand the OP's concern. My earlier post should deal with those concerns.

mohab · 02 Feb 2016

I tried to run Windows update and instead of downloading one service pack 1 file, it wanted to download a bunch of KB files. Is this natural?

UsernameIssues · 02 Feb 2016

mohab said:

I tried to run Windows update and instead of downloading one service pack 1 file, it wanted to download a bunch of KB files. Is this natural?

yes

see this post:
Update issues

mohab · 02 Feb 2016

UPDATED WINDOW7!!

Thank you very much for all your helpful posts, could have done it without you