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I have had to reinstall my Vista computer.
I have done the factory reinstall.
I have installed SP1.
I have installed SP2.
I have then gone to Windows Updates and and checked for updates.
10 Hours later, I am still waiting for it to check for updates.
There is about 50% CPU activity.
(When I have done a reinstall in the past. After I have finished installing SP2, the updates would usually take about 3 hours.)
There are no errors or anything. It is just taking forever.
Does anyone have any ideas?
(There was a trick with Windows XP where you did the windows updates through the command prompt. I cannot remember what that was. Does anyone know if it can be done in Vista?)
1I can replicate your experience. XP is not so bad, but on a fresh install of Vista or Windows 7, the first run of Windows Update takes hours and hours. MS have clearly used some kind of exponential algorithm in their update code, AND they don't seem too concerned about fixing it. I guess we're all supposed to be on Win 10 now huh. – misha256 – 2016-05-02T00:11:56.820
I wrote this answer for W7 but should work for Vista also, report back if it does please...http://superuser.com/questions/951960/windows-7-sp1-windows-update-stuck-checking-for-updates/1022204#1022204
– Moab – 2016-05-02T23:44:28.1671Yes, it's a common thing now. Win7 after installing with SP1, I had to wait 8 hours last time for the updates to show up. – TJJ – 2016-05-04T08:56:44.030
1To make sure it is actually doing something you can check %windir%\windowsupdate.log. That is also the place to check when some updates fail. The info in the gui is less than useful in most cases. It does take a long time the 1st time around. Yesterday MS has announced that they are releasing a security hotfix rollup for Windows 7 that you can manually install to get most of the updates in one go. It doesn't seem likely that they will do this for Vista though. – Tonny – 2016-05-18T14:37:24.177