Stuck on checking for updates

[mrwoberts]

...exactly, as in, my environment has 65 x Windows 7 Pro (pupil laptops), 6 x Windows 8.1 Pro laptops (teacher laptops),... you get the idea.

I just wanted an accurate picture of your environment.

[FN-GM]

Oh right I see. We are a small academy trust. We have 790 (give or take) Windows 7 Enterprise x64 clients and a small handful of Windows 10 computers. This time next year the vast majority of machines will be Windows 10 Enterprise x64. Off top of my head im not sure what proportion are Laptops and Desktops.

[mrwoberts]

Thanks. How do you go about deploying your clients? Do you integrate updates before deployment?

[FN-GM]

Thanks. How do you go about deploying your clients? Do you integrate updates before deployment?

 

We use SCCM 2012 R2. You can slipstream the updates straight into the image file. Works really well.

[Arthur]

Does anyone know whats causing this please? It's being a right pain!

Microsoft released a new hotfix for Windows 7 today that might be of interest.

 

Installing and searching for updates is slow and high CPU usage occurs in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 « KB3102810

 

Issue 1

When you install updates by using System Center Configuration Manager, the installation takes a long time, and System Center Configuration Manager becomes overloaded.

 

Issue 2

The Svchost.exe process occupies 100 percent of CPU usage when you upgrade a Windows Update client to Windows 10.

[JasonNVSD]

Microsoft released a new hotfix for Windows 7 today that might be of interest.

The problem is when not using SCCM and not upgrading to Windows 10, so no such luck. Good to know nonetheless.

[bon_clay]

Even though I am not using SCCM or upgrading to windows 10 I tried the hotfix and it seems to be able to find updates a lot quicker (10 - 20mins instead of 3 - 4 hours).

[Arthur]

The problem is when not using SCCM and not upgrading to Windows 10, so no such luck.

Sometimes hotfixes do more than the KB description suggests. A good example is KB2732673.

 

You should try it. It does make a difference.

[Arthur]

@FN-GM. I came across the following article yesterday and thought it might be worth posting.

 

Updating Windows 7 Update Agent in a MDT or SCCM Task Sequence Prior to Installing Updates

 

Issue

In July 2015, we started seeing issues with the Windows Update Agent using very high memory utilization during update scans. The scans would eventually time out with error: WARNING: ISusInternal::GetUpdateMetadata2 failed, hr=8007000E

 

There are two parts to this issue as shown below (More detailed info in this blog post):

 

1. The Microsoft Update / WSUS Catalog is becoming very large over time with all the updates being released. There is a way to help keep your local WSUS update catalog smaller by declining superseded updates. You can review this blog post for more info on that.
   
2. Windows Update Agents older than version 7.6.7601.19077 (Dec 2015) on Windows 7 are susceptible to the higher memory utilization and timeouts. The timeout happens more often on Windows 7 x86, but can also happen on Windows 7 x64.
   

 

The Resolution

I’ve done various test on updating the Windows Update Agent in a build and capture task sequence to the latest version: KB3112343. This latest Windows Update Agent update 7.6.7601.19077 is a MSU update.

 

Typically, you would just use wusa.exe to apply a MSU update, but this would cause issues on Windows 7 since wusa.exe would initiate an update scan to check for applicability for the MSU update. This would cause the issue we are trying to fix since it would be using Windows Update Agent 7.6.7600.320 to perform the scan. This scan would take more than an hour to complete.

 

To work around this, I used pkgmgr.exe to apply the CAB file within the MSU update directly.

 

The install command is: pkgmgr /ip /m:"Windows6.1-KB3112343-x64.cab" /quiet /norestart /l:%temp%\WUAgentUpdate.log

 

You can download the Install Script and CAB files here. This install script (Install.cmd) will handle Windows 7 x86 or x64 WUAgent update. You can add this step prior to the Windows Update steps in MDT and create a reboot step after the application install.

 

You can download a pre-built application that includes the content and detection logic here. This application will handle the reboot since it will receive exit code 3010 and reboot for you.

[free780]

Yes have experienced this with mdt. You only get 2 updates if you don't update the update agent.

[JasonNVSD]

Here's how to significantly speed up Windows 7 scans for updates | InfoWorld

 

It's being reported multiple places as making a huge difference. Windows Update scans taking minutes instead of hours!