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TL;DR
When you initiate Windows Updates within Windows XP, you are directed to the Windows Updates website. (Assuming you already have the ActiveX, Installer plug-in installed in your browser,) the website displays a green, scrolling status bar and appears to just hang for a few minutes. Why does this step of the update process take such a long time to execute?
I'm not interested in speeding up the process. I just want to know what the updating software is doing since it's not installing software and it's not peaking CPU & network usage. What stalls the process?
It's a common task for many of us who work in any form of IT position using Windows. Eventually you have to install/re-install a version of Windows and what follows is a very long OS updating process.
For a long time I have accepted the fact that this is a slow process and that's all there is to it. There is a lot to download, and some updates require restarts followed by further updates... Ugh!
This morning I had to go through the process of installing Windows XP with SP3. I'm installing the OS on a VM on an SSD and I've been working on this thing for over 6 hours.
Although there are many ways to knit-pick this process for improvements, there is one step that is always particularly slow and I cannot figure out a good reason why.
That step is the update detection step on a manual update. Specifically, when navigating to the Windows (or Microsoft) Updates page, and then clicking the 'Custom' button to detect your updates. It appears that your PC just sits there for a painful amount of time. Check your Task Manager and it looks like your PC is, in fact, locked because your CPU isn't cooking, so something has stalled. I have no clue what's going on or what would cause this?
What is the updating software doing? If the registry was being searched, shouldn't my CPU usage peak?
Does anybody know what's happening? I can loosely justify why some of the steps in the update process take so long. However, this one doesn't seem to have any reasoning.
UPDATE
Just to clarify, I started with a Windows XP with SP3 iso. After the OS installed (which was actually quite fast,) I started the updates. My initial check found well over 100 critical updates and, if memory serves me correctly, over 40 suggested updates.
I had to do a restart-and-update process at least 4 times yesterday. Again, I'm not looking for a justification of the entire process. Instead, when I navigate to the update page (after the ActiveX component has been installed.) What takes the detection process so long, especially since my CPU is barely being used, memory isn't peaking and my network traffic doesn't tend to spike at all?
If you're behind a firewall and need to go through a proxy server to get to the internet, detection will be very slow because it tries a direct connection first and only goes through the proxy when the direct connection times out. Or it might just be that Microsoft's servers are busy and can only feed you the detection data very slowly. – Harry Johnston – 2012-07-02T21:12:10.577
If you want to do it quicker (and if you do OS installs often) use updated installation media or ready to use disk images whenever reinstalling is needed. – Sampo Sarrala - codidact.org – 2012-07-03T00:02:05.967
2You mention CPU, memory and network traffic - what about disk IO? – Harry Johnston – 2012-07-03T20:45:14.640
1If you just want to trigger an updates detection cycle right now, but you don’t like to use Windows Update website, just type this on a command line:
wuauclt /detectnow
. Regardless of its schedule, Windows Update Agent will wake up and check for your needed updates immediately. – Chungalin – 2013-11-14T19:28:57.187