Rebuild of Win 7 what is the best way to catch up on WU's 100s+?

[JCN9801]

I have two Win 7 rebuilds to do... One has 200+ updates (incl Office 2010). The other a from scratch SP1 install (more or less).

I have had problems in the past with WU trying to do any more than 6-12; maybe 20 WU, at a time on a good day .

Should I proceed in ascending KB order? Or most recent first? Or in batches by Windows Product (Win 7, security, MSE, Office, Critical, Important, Recommended, etc) Is WU smart enough to work-around dependencies?

Finally, I have no idea how this particular anomaly happened but on my working-day HP laptop:

My ntdll.dll went backwards from Version 22436 to 18247. MS Support Tech couldn't explain this either. Even more curiously he went off to research it (chat session) and then came back with a whole different story line: WUs are encrypted, they are UN-examinable EXE files, etc. What??? MS does have a cross-ref in their DB about which files change with which KB? Something fishy going on here.

I had a bunch of system files change around Oct 19, 2013 (en masse - same creation time stamp). My WU is set to NOT auto-install so several KBs could be involved but I can't find out which one exactly. I can see "package" references in the registry and in \winsxs\ that show these files related somehow but I am not an expert at deciphering what happened.

Can anybody shed light on version "reverting" of c:\windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll and similar files? In addition to above "best way forward".

It can take longer to do completion WU than an original install! Some of these WU batches take 20+ minutes. Watching paint dry! Is this normal?

Thanks in advance!
----JCN

 

[AddRAM]

Yep, the updates could take an hour totally normal, hide the updates you don`t want, then let it start.

You should be able to start the update installs ( all of them ) then walk away from the machine.

Install Microsoft Security Essentials last, it will stop the updates, because it needs your input. So uncheck it.

Then install it on your second round of updates.