Continuous search for updates.

But the thing is, that's not what happens. Old windows 7 pro (.Net 2.0) -> SP1 via update -> .Net 4.0 updates. Neither .Net 3.5 nor .Net 4.5 mentioned --> windows update searches forever.

How long have you left it searching for updates?

Hmm probably the longest time I've had the patience for is about 10 hours, and I know what you're going to say, and no, I will not be leaving it on for 24 hours.... too much heat, unless someone can at least conjecture why that would be necessary.

After all why does it require such a long time? That's long enough to analyze the entire OS multiple times unless it's spending most of the time doing nothing but busy-wait the CPU to death. Admittedly it kind of looks like that's what it's doing.

if there were only a way to apply all relevant updates manually and avoid windows update entirely.

I'm not sure why some people have to wait so long lately.

If you figure it out, you could make lots of people happy

Some people think that some of the update servers are just too busy in some locations. I could not confirm that theory using Wireshark to see the traffic... because the Virtual Machine that I was testing with got its list of 200+ updates within 20 minutes.

I don't think it's slow windows servers because the vast amount of time is spent without network IO, but when there is network IO (especially when using update WU .256 instead of .320) it's at > 25 Mbits/sec.

I have a few W7pro64bit VMs. I only keep one fully patched. The rest only have SP1 installed. These VMs return to their frozen (not patched) state when I exit them. A few months ago, I started seeing threads about long Windows Update scan times after a fresh build. I tested the scan time within one of my VMs, but gave up after 4 hours due to the heat being generated by the laptop (which I was also using at the time). Since then, I have seen some long scan times, but not in the last few weeks. Since the VMs are frozen, the change in scan times has to be external.

I have seen people (with tin foil hats) theorize that the busy servers randomly tell Windows 7 clients to scan everything again and again. Let's hope that they were joking.

This similar to the setup i have except translated in time. There are (KVM) VMs installed from a Windows 7 Pro DVD, (not SP1), however SP1 can be applied in a straightforward way via either WU or ISO, but as soon as .NET 4 updates are applied and any windows update version .320 or later cause this problem.

As I've noted in the related threads. This is the solution to the problem.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3102810