Windows Update Has Been Stoopid Forever

Toshiba Netbook NB505 and Acer Switch Alpha 12

Everyone who thinks Windows Update is great please raise your hand! Oops. I don't see any hands. That's because Windows Update is stoopid and has caused grief forever. Yesterday I had some spare time and decided to update two devices. As you guessed, if both updates had gone smoothly I would not be writing this.

The first device was a Toshba NB505 netbook which came with Windows 7 Starter. Purchased 6 years ago, it doesn't get used nowadays. For a couple of years I kept it alive because it was the only portable device in the house that had Windows and an Ethernet port, allowing me to it direct connect to our wireless router when there was a problem with the router or the router needed firmware updates. When we moved into our new house a little over a year ago there was an existing Ethernet run to the bedroom where our main desktop PC is located. This provided a direct connection to the router and put the little netbook out of business.

Every few months I get the netbook out and do Windows Update out of habit and for no other reason. Yesterday was such a day and 23 updates were installed without a hitch. It was a slow laborious process taking a couple of hours because the Toshiba NB505 netbook is a glacially slow device and everything it does is a test of patience.

The second device was an Acer Switch Alpha 12 2-in-1 I purchased back in September. I opted for the i5 processor (middle ground between the i3 and i7). It came with Windows 10 Home. It is a nice little device and can run circles around the Toshiba. Windows 10 will automatically perform Windows Update in the background but in this case I manually went in and checked for updates. This began the process of downloading and installing the Windows 10 Creator Update (version 1079), a major update to the operating system with new features I didn't particularly know about or care about. It took over seven hours to download and install the update. Seven hours!

Needless to say I was off doing other things while the update crawled along. Checking on it periodically there were several times during the “preparing for installation” and “installing” phases that I would have sworn that Windows Update had hung. Fortunately for me I had a recent experience with a PC at work where Windows Update took way longer than usual (over an hour in that case, not seven hours) and I had learned to simply walk away and give Windows Update as much time as it wants to get the job done.

Seven hours for an update is ludicrous but that's not my main gripe. After all of these years you would think that Microsoft would have added a better progress indicator to the Windows Update mechanism. If “Preparing For Updates” or “Configuring Updates” takes a long period of time, having a percentage indicator “freeze” is unacceptable. During that long period of time when the percentage does not advance, many shorter duration operations are being performed. It would not be all that difficult to display something like the name of the file being processed or the key of the registry entry being updated as the software is installed. This common practice serves as a decent pacifier during long updates and reassures the user that the process is indeed not hung. Will Microsoft ever make this sensible improvement? Doubt it.