Major Windows 10 Update - Takes Pretty Long to Install

[MineralMan]

Microsoft has been rolling out a major cumulative update for Windows 10. If you see the notice that you need to restart, know that it could take 2 hours or even longer to complete the installation of the update. Don't start it unless you have the time to spare. You can put it off from within the notice box.

Just saying, after sitting here watching the blue update screen for over 2 hours...

[Demsrule86]

1. Oh boy...those long updates produce the screen of death (black or blue) on

a fair number of computers...I bet I will be fixing all my neighbors computers..I keep linux so I can pull out the files not yet backed up and reinstall windows.

[MineralMan]

2. Well, the update worked fine on my Dell.

It just took a long time.

[Demsrule86]

4. That is good...the problem is in our area the internet can come and go...stopping in the middle is

not good...best to download to the computer and even then it can cause havoc...I can't tell you how many computers have been affected...and then the fun stuff...you can't log in because you can't enter your password or you can't search or Cortana who you killed is back hogging resources...sigh...I hate Windows.

[MineralMan]

5. Yes. If your Internet connection is unreliable, Windows updates can be

a horror story. We're lucky here. Our Comcast cable internet is very solid, and our two main desktop machines are connected to the router via ethernet hard wire cabling. I would never do a Windows update on wifi.

[exboyfil]

3. I keep nursing along my Windows 7 machines (2 of them)

My last computer purchase was a Chromebook. I don't have the crossed fingers feel for it like I do for my Windows machines. My primary computer is now my Chromebook (my daughter has one as well and has been using them for over five years).

[hunter]

9. My Chromebook is the most worry free computer I have.

It was not break-the-bank expensive and it uses a small fraction of the energy my Windows laptop or Linux desktop use. It's quiet too, no fans or spinning hard drive.

I won't touch Microsoft Windows unless someone is paying me.

Of all the gigabytes downloaded by my Windows laptop, most have been Microsoft updates. I don't use it for casual web surfing. If I didn't have unlimited internet that would irritate me immensely.

[kimbutgar]

13. I got you beat, I have an old laptop still running Windows XP that I never search only You tube

And DU. Also one with Windows 7 that I never update. I also have a new Windows 10 computer. And for the longest time i had Vista. People complained about it but I had no problem

[Clarity2]

32. Youve got till jan 2020

when they end security updates. I’d stretch it out till then if you can. I hate windows 10, and would give anything to go back to Vista.

They took away the dang alt/ctrl/del ability. They took away a lot of shortcuts. Who does that?

[OhioBlue]

43. what OS took away the ctl-alt-del option?

I think my windows 10 update installed correctly and I just tried the ctl-alt-del and it worked.

[Clarity2]

45. Maybe the update

added it back? I went from vista to a new computer with Win 10, so not sure when it disappeared. I know I had looked up what happened to that shortcut in win 10, and it was reported to be gone.

[TheBlackAdder]

6. If this is the 1803 April Update, extreme caution needs to be taken, research before applying it.

.

Many systems that are upgrades will have problems. If you lose connectivity, you'll have problems.

Serious problems, requiring a reinstall of OS, if you have Avast AVG anti-virus running while the install occurs.


Update - Clarification:

Clean Windows 10 installs on newer hardware will experience minimal issues.

If you are a WIN 7 or WIN 8 upgrade user, especially running on older hardware, you're in for some hurt.
Apparently, there is an issue with Windows not properly replacing certain older WIN7/8 binaries and files which cause the WIN 10 1803 to ralph during the install. This might lead to uncontrolled reboots, BSODs, add-on boards and other firmware issues. This is why I mentioned that you need to fully research the type of system you are running to see how to remediate these problems before they hit or after they inop your system.

.

[MineralMan]

7. That's the one. Microsoft is still rolling it out to customers.

I appear to have lost my webcam device in the update. It's an older Logitech camera and mic unit. I don't have time to bother with it right now, and never use it anyhow. I have deleted Skype from the PC, anyhow.

Before allowing Windows to update on one of those major updates, I always shut down all running apps. I've learned that lesson in the past. I just use Windows Defender for anti-virus, along with serious care in what I do online.

As with all of those updates, I lost my SDR radio dongle, too. It uses a substitute driver for one of the standard Windows driver, so that has to be re-installed each time, since Windows switches back to the default driver when it updates.

[TheBlackAdder]

8. Others state that their screens will go completely black for hours and warn not to touch the system.

.

While their PCs appear frozen or bricked, it's slowly applying the patches, and any interruption can hump things up.

People need to make sure they have a UPS or a steady power supply during this process too.


Do not attempt during a storm.

.

[MineralMan]

10. Good advice at all times, of course.

I watch the hard drive light during updates. Or listen to the drive operate.

Even then, though, sometimes everything stops and just the CPU is active. I wish Microsoft would keep users better informed about progress during those updates. Just saying not to turn the computer off and showing a percentage that changes so slowly isn't helpful to panicky users.

Really, MSFT should re-engineer their updating process to make it less intrusive and to fail safe throughout the process. Most Windows users have no clue about how this stuff all works, so keeping them in the dark is not a good answer. The other thing is to make sure you have your Microsoft ID and password written down and available. In a worst case, you might have to log in from another device to find out what to fix what went wrong. That happened to me a while back, and I could not remember my Microsoft logon. It took about an hour to get that reset, using an Android tablet.

Really, I don't know how some folks keep it all together and functioning. That may be why so many people have dropped using traditional desktops and laptops altogether. It gets harder all the time. Still, I need the desktop environment. I can't type worth crap on anything but a standard keyboard, and typing fast and steadily is how I earn my living.

[LeftInTX]

31. Good advice to watch the weather!

[LeftInTX]

25. I had problems after this one!

It knocked my wireless scanner offline....

Of course, I don't use my scanner very often and when I do, I'm always in a rush.

And when problems exist with wireless scanners the cause can sometimes be bewildering.

Last week, my scanner doesn't work.
I try inputting SSID...zip NADA...

I try inputting an IP address for it...zip NADA.

So, I go online in search of answers.
I waded through all sorts of solutions.

I finally uninstalled the driver software and reinstalled it.

The solution sounds simple, but when the potential causes are unknown the solution is unknown.

It took several hours to get that scanner back online!

(When rummaging through potential causes, I found a notation in the device properties...same date as the Windows Update, so it led me to software issues)

[MurrayDelph]

11. Strange problem that has happened since then

I can burn DVDs, but not CDs (It keeps wanting to pre-format them, which it should not have to do, then fails).

[Roland99]

12. Yeah. One of my work laptops did that as I was about to leave work

Kept the laptop open in the front passenger seat and plugged it in when I got home so it could finish

Blah.

[Dennis Donovan]

14. 1803, but it's a solid update...

[MineralMan]

15. Well, I looked at the list of stuff in it, and didn't see anything

that applies to how I use my PC. The update does include some security features, though, so I installed it.

[Dennis Donovan]

16. I'm a software developer so I was relieved that this update didn't mess with our software...

1709, however, was a bear...

[MineralMan]

18. I used to develop applications for Windows.

I had a small, one-person shareware company and did all tasks. One of my rules was to write all code in compliance with Microsoft's guidelines for Windows. Avoiding shortcuts kept those apps working right from Windows 3.1 through Windows 7, without any glitches.

Of course, they were all written in Visual Basic, which stayed pretty compliant right through version 4.0. I shut the company down and moved all of my software into the public domain when Microsoft transitioned to VBA. With only a few exceptions, they all still run OK in Windows 10, although apps that used the printer have some problems, and my old font utilities no longer work at all, since they used a third party DLL to access uninstalled fonts. The DLL wasn't compliant after Windows 7.

[mr_lebowski]

23. VBA? Isn't that just the mini VB built into like Excel and Access?

That's always my understanding but I've not programmed in the microsoft world in a long while (though I did a bunch of Access work circa 2000 and thought the language I was using was called VBA). I'm an SQL guy and our shop is 100% Unix-y stuff in terms of the front-end dev i.e. all Apache, PHP, etc.

I'd have thought based on the rest of what you said you'd have meant CLR/.net.

[MineralMan]

24. Before eliminating Visual Basic as a development language,

Microsoft issued one version of VB that used VBA syntax and structure. It obsoleted all previous VB code. Yes, VBA had become the Office macro language already. Microsoft then stopped selling VB as a separate development platform. A lot of folks like me were not too happy about that. At that point, I just closed up shop and issued a final bug-fix version for all of my applications and released them into the public domain.

For casual developers like myself, VB was a great way to create applications. Interface design was a piece of cake and the event-driven model allowed fast development of operational code. I started using VB with its first version, and solved a lot of its limitations with work-arounds that I freely shared. I even developed an animation module for VB that let people created animated features, using some trickery built into the platform. For one application I did, a label program, I even developed a simple database engine for mailing lists and other functions. It used hidden, linked list boxes for sorting of string arrays. A kluge, but one that worked remarkably well and was fast, since the sorting function was coded in the boxes. I shared that with the community.

I figured out a workaround for VB's lack of graphics printing functions for my business card creation program and shared that with the VB community, too. My font utility, called "Fonter" used some simple trickery to allow previewing of uninstalled Windows fonts and could install fonts temporarily, as well. I even developed a font checking program that could identify flawed TrueType fonts that could crash Windows pre-Windows 95. That utility was freeware, and Microsoft hosted it on its own site and recommended it to people who were having fonts cause crashes. It used the temporary font installation strategy and an invisible text box to utilize but not display all characters of the font, trapping the error that caused Windows to crash. Since the flaw was in Windows display DLL system, I could trap the fatal error, since the font never appeared on the display. Microsoft never figured out how I did it, but it saved a lot of people from installing bad TT fonts.

At that time, I was reviewing software for PC World, so I had enough clout to coerce MSFT into adding features to VB by calling out their absence in reviews. Microsoft deliberately crippled the early versions of VB to keep it from being a full scale development system. VB was bought by Microsoft from another developer, so it was always sort of an orphan development system.

More's the pity, really. It was a cool platform for a lot of uses. VBA was Microsoft-developed, and was very un-VB-like, really. It threw a lot of people for a loop.

[mr_lebowski]

26. Huh ... I did not know that ... maybe they crippled it to pave the way for .net then ...

I remember that unlike VB, VBA had no inheritance (at least not as of Access 2K) which was pretty annoying. It worked 'okay' to control the native Access forms but writing custom classes was a joke iirc.

[MineralMan]

34. I used VBA to create Word macros, but that's it.

A lot of the time, I used Word's macro recorder to create the functionality and just coded around that. I hate database programming, so I never really bothered with Access, which is an awful sort of database to work with anyhow. Yuck. But I hate database stuff, anyhow.

Microsoft pretty much hated BASIC, anyhow. It took them forever to release QuickBasic, their DOS Basic compiler. Interestingly enough, though, it enabled an event-oriented development potential. I created a menu shell system in it that took advantage of all mouse features. It was essential an event-oriented shell, with all of the apps functionality working within a loop, waiting for something to happen. This was back in the DOS 3.1 days. Even Microsoft wasn't using the right mouse button for anything in its DOS applications. Weird. I discovered that I could watch for mouse movements and hovering, and incorporated some of that into the shell.

When Windows appeared, I understood what Microsoft had been working on. Event-oriented programming was where things were going. The utility programs I was creating for DOS were unique, and I saw some of the drop down menu features I had built into it show up in applications interfaces, like Word.

Interesting times, those were, in the transition period between text-based and graphical interfaces. I didn't care. I was playing with the PC and trying to find ways to make stuff work better, or at least work the way I though they should. I wondered, though, sometimes, if things I did got picked up. My QuickBasic application shell used the right mouse button to display context menus. I wonder...

[Blue_true]

17. I did the update on Wednesday, took my laptop around 20 minutes.

Is your system loaded down with Apps?

[Ron Obvious]

19. Hell, I never even managed to install the Fall Creator's update

No obvious reason why, it just failed. I finally had to flag the net connection as metered so it wouldn't just keep doing it without asking. I took a long time over this without help. The CPU and RAM are fine, but the unit is a bit oldish.

Maybe the new Spring Creator's update fixes it.

[MineralMan]

20. I suspect that the Spring Creator's update will require

that the Fall update is installed. I'm not sure, though.

One of my hard and fast rules is not to install new versions of Windows on older PCs. By the time I'm ready for a new version of the OS, it's usually time for a new PC anyhow, so I bought a brand-new Dell with Windows 10 on it and gobs of RAM. Oddly enough, this is the first new PC I've purchased that didn't require keeping my old one running on another desk. This time, I put all of my old data on a 32gb USB drive and dumped it into the new PC, using separate folders from the Windows 10 set folders. That made access to old files a lot easier and let me use the new file folders for newly created data. I just created an OldData folder, and copied all the folders from the old PC into it. That worked way better than any system I had ever used for transferring data from an old to a new PC. Even my old desktop folder still exists in the OldData folder. I also transitioned to Office 365, since my beloved old Office 2000 wasn't compatible with Windows 10.

I suppose I probably copied a lot of stuff I'll never need over, but, hell, I have a terabyte of hard drive space, so who cares?

[left-of-center2012]

21. Installed OK on my 5 year old HP laptop

I clicked on 'download' when I went to bed.

I started the install around 3 a.m. when I went to the john.

Have no clue what it did.

[MineralMan]

22. Mostly, it did stuff you won't ever need or use.

Most of the update was about features that most of us never use or for hardware we don't have.

I'm set up for automatic download of updates, but on-demand installation. Otherwise, Windows would be bothering me all the time with constant security updates. About once a week, I look to see if I need to install and restart. Generally, I do that at the end of my daily work session.

[mr_lebowski]

36. How do you do that in W10? Haven't been able to find the old 'download but install when I say'

Dialog in W10 lately. I could swear I used to have it in W10, did they get rid of it/hide it somewhere? Not that I've looked that hard, but ... (edit: actually it's my new Lappie that's missing that option, which is a Home version, that's probably why I can't find it)

1803 (April Creators) went smooth for me which kinda surprised me. Not only am I a W7 upgrade version, this OS install is now about 8 years old total, first installed 2010 and I have TONS of stuff on it. I've probably updated my nVidia drivers like 50 times on it. Not only that but I installed W7 using a custom config 'script' (actually an XML file) that permanently placed the entire "Users" folder on my E: drive rather than C:, and I don't even think that's technically 'supported' anymore (which I think is terrible, in fact, how difficult it was in the first place was lame ... if the installer detects a second drive it should ask 'where do you want to put your Users file?', IMHO).

I did that cause I don't believe in having 'stuff I care about' on my System Drive ... I have 3 HD's ... one is boot sdd which I keep lean as possible, the 2nd has Users folders with all my media, game saves, and all the app installers for everything on my system, and the 3rd is where I put all Program Files/Apps that aren't 'core' to Windows like all my installed games, stuff like OpenOffice, SQL Server, MySQL, etc). My biggest goal being that if my Windows install gets mucked, I wanna be able to scorch the earth and re-install Windows without worry I'm losing critical stuff. Course I did all that ... then haven't reinstalled Windows since lol ...

Was actually impressed that the W10 upgrade didn't barf on it (I waited til the last day it was offered free to switch, figuring my chances for everything working well would be best the later I migrated), and so far all the updates have gone smooth as well. And this isn't newest HW it's First Gen I7 i.e X58/LGA1366(as you likely know we're now about 4 sockets and 8 generations into i7).

Since it's an X5675 (six-core + HT server-class Xenon) I have OC'd to from 3.0GHz to 4.14GHz the damn thing still totally holds it's own. Longest running platform I've ever had BY FAR.

[MineralMan]

37. Windows Update then Settings.

Just search in Windows for Windows Update.

[Bengus81]

27. Shouldn't take two hours to do any update,a new install wouldn't take 30 minutes....

Something else is happening there....

[krawhitham]

30. A very fragmented 5400 rpm HDD with little free space would be my guess

[Bengus81]

33. Guess so...just checked my update history......

That 1803 update was done on my computer back in early May. Never even knew it happened or might have seen the Don't shut the power off to your computer screen for a short time.

Wasn't even noticed but on this rig I have a Samsung 960 EVO M.2 drive.

[LeftInTX]

28. I have Windows 10 Home

The options for configuring Windows Update are limited.

However, for several days, Windows was prompting me to restart. I just kept putting it off until I could close all my programs and go to bed.

Didn't have to look at any blue screens or anything.
Got up and a new login screen was there.

It was a huge update and it messed up some of my settings.
Not only did it knock my scanner offline, it "updated" (AKA messed with) the driver software.
The scanner would not work with the update, so I had to uninstall it and reinstall with older software.

I only allow Windows Update to restart my computer while I'm going to bed.
I also close all of my programs prior.

[krawhitham]

29. cumulative update to Windows 10 (v1803) only took 15 minutes for me

I'm rocking a 6 year old AMD FX 8350 setup

[MineralMan]

35. Heck. I don't know. It took a lot longer for me, for some reason.

[EX500rider]

38. It hosed my computer...

....even got a message saying it would not work with my QuickBooks16 which I need for work, and everything ran super slow...like worse then a 486/33 with 4 megs of RAM...lol

I was overdue for a new hard drive anyway so I backed up and put one in, had to go back to Win7 since the is the last disk i bought. At least things are back up to speed.

I still have my install disk for XP, ME, Win95 too, don't have Win3.1 anymore since it was on like 12 floppies, don't even have a reader for those anymore.

[George II]

40. Hah! I was one of the suckers (nerds) who went to Compusa (yeah, that long ago!!) at midnight....

....when Windows 95 was released. THAT took hours and hours to install because it was on those 3.5" "floppies" (even though they were rigid!!!) and you had to sit there to change the disk every 10-15 minutes.

Ah the good ol' days - Windows 2.0, 3.0 (yeah), 3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8 (which I heard sucked so bad I never installed it!), and now 10. Overall Windows 10 is the most stable and fastest.

[EX500rider]

41. It's funny, everybodies most hated WinME always worked great for me, I liked it.

But my Win95 came on a CD...lol.

[George II]

42. Of all the upgrades of Windows during that "era", Windows ME to me was the most stable and....

....the only version where "restore" was consistent. But we're talking about more than 20 years ago.

[George II]

39. When there's an update, I start it just before I go to bed. It's tricky but....

....about 9 times out of 10 that works. The one time is when it hangs and when I get up I get a major error message.

But most of the time, as you point out, they are excruciatingly long!

I signed up for the "Windows Insider" program, so I get an update about once a week. Some have been great, some have been abominable - but they realize that because most of the bad updates are updated again a day or two later.

If you get a chance, could you post the update version you have? Thanks.

[OhioBlue]

44. yes, mine took forever! I waited for a couple of hours as I needed to prepare minutes

for a past meeting for a non-profit board that I volunteer for. I procrastinated and needed to get them done the other night and had to wait until after mid-night.