Windows 7 64-bit update 7 of 7 has been running for 14 hours

I shut my machine down last night and it started installing 7 updates, it skipped through the first 6 quite quickly but the 7th one has been running now for 14 hours, what should I do?

Rob

Posted 2011-06-19T03:44:35.470

Reputation: 223

Shut it down, try again. – ubiquibacon – 2011-06-19T04:20:44.247

Yeah but what will shutting it down do? it says don't turn it off or unplug it... – Rob – 2011-06-19T04:33:59.193

1It is smart enough to figure out the updated didn't stick and it will start over. If it messes up again then you can investigate further. – ubiquibacon – 2011-06-19T05:11:11.183

Answers

Any idea what the updates were?

I would manually restart my system. You'll then restart and may be prompted to do a chkdsk (if I remember right). There's no harm in that at all. If the aborted update screwed anything up, windows might be able to patch things up.

When you boot into Windows it wouldn't be a bad idea to hit:

Start Button-> type "command prompt"-> right click on "command prompt" option-> choose "run as administrator"-> type "sfc /scannow" at the prompt.

That will run a scan of your system and make sure everything's intact. At that point I would try Windows update again.

If you're so inclined, checking the event viewer might give you more info as well.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Open-Event-Viewer

Lil' Smokey

Posted 2011-06-19T03:44:35.470

Reputation: 517

This worked, thanks - it didn't seem to have any issues with being shut down. – Rob – 2011-06-19T05:37:19.360

That's good. When you say "this worked", you mean the chkdsk and system scans came back clean? Were you able to install the update later? – Lil' Smokey – 2011-06-20T23:26:01.433

I didn't do a scan disk (naughty I know) but it just restarted without any problems and there was a failed update in the update list, I slowly went through and applied all the updates manually and now it all seems stable again. – Rob – 2011-06-21T09:15:14.413

Sounds good. Updates can be a real pain. – Lil' Smokey – 2011-06-24T23:30:45.353

If Windows won't boot after restarting in the middle of the update, you can boot startup repair, if you cancel it before it starts scanning and go under Advanced options and you can use System Restore to go back to before the updates were installed.

ThatGuyInIT

Posted 2011-06-19T03:44:35.470

Reputation: 784

That is not true for all updates, in fact it rarely happens from what I have seen. – ubiquibacon – 2011-06-19T05:12:00.093

A System Restore Point is created by Windows Update before installing updates if System Restore is enabled. Although it doesn't do a restore point for each update, it just makes one before installing the selected updates. Now whether that will fix the issue or not is another issue... – ThatGuyInIT – 2011-06-19T05:40:53.830

I'm talking about Windows not booting after restarting during an update. – ubiquibacon – 2011-06-19T05:45:24.417