Windows Update still hangs at 0KB of 0% after many attempts to fix

I'm trying again tonight but it's been two hours of 'checking for updates' and it's still not picked up anything. I did try deleting the contents of the software distribution folder to start again after failures to pick updates up in last two evenings. But it doesn't appear to of helped - I'm going to give it a couple more hours till midnight here in uk to see if anything happens. But am pretty fed up with patch Tuesday at the moment. Just want to get them done and forget about them for another few weeks til the next dreaded patch Tuesday!

Its never been this bad before that's for sure

After two and a half hours it found them!!! But now it's been stuck at downloading 0% for the past 45 minutes. I'm hoping it will start moving at some stage but it's not looking great

Unfortunately it's not really doing a lot on the modem. It's blinking intermittently but I don't think that's the laptop causing that occasional activity as we have numerous household devices which are probably just triggering it now and then.

Woah after about two hours something is happening, now at 29% downloaded. Finally MS servers have woken up. Totally unimpressed with MS though but it seems after 3 evenings they may actually get done and I might be able to go to bed at a reasonable hour.