What's New: Microsoft finally fixes Windows Update slowness

As far back as spring 2015 Microsoft has had problems with Windows Update on Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Server 2008 R2 computers. Despite several new versions of the Windows Update software and ongoing work on Microsoft's end, over the past year checking for and installing updates has generally taken longer and longer, currently as much as 24 hours or more on older/slower hardware. During a check for updates, one CPU core may be fully used, so for example a 4-core CPU will show continual 25% CPU usage, or a 2-core CPU 50% usage. This of course causes the PC to appear slower than normal to the user and uses up laptop battery life.

This week Microsoft finally released a Windows Update client that fixes the issue. We are in the process of installing it on all Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 computers under ITS TeamCare.

Microsoft has not released any updates to Windows Update at all for Windows Vista so at this stage it seems unlikely this problem will ever be fixed.

Thursday, Jun 23, 2016 03:52 pm CDT

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