Installing updates takes twice the download time

[caos]

I've frequently noticed that the installation phase of Windows Update
in my W2K takes very long time. I've never clocked it but it appears to
be twice the time it took to download the updates. Does anyone know
what goes on during the installation that can take such long time?
/CAOS

 

[Sky King]

I've frequently noticed that the installation phase of Windows Update
in my W2K takes very long time. I've never clocked it but it appears
to be twice the time it took to download the updates. Does anyone know
what goes on during the installation that can take such long time?

What do you consider a "very long time" for the update? What are the specs
on your system, to include the CPU rating, hard drive total/free space
reported, amount of RAM installed, and if the system is on a LAN (and you
have mapped drives)?

Regardless of the above, the primary factor in installing an update is free
space on your local hard drive. You can help by cleaning up the system;
here are some steps to start with:

1. Clean out your default Temp/Tmp folders. The default Temp folder should
not be used to store personal files, and should be cleaned out regularly.
2. Clear your IE TIF (Tools/Internet Options/General tab/Delete files, then
select to clear Offline content).
3. Open My Computer, select the C: drive, right-click for Properties, then
Clean Up. Repeat for all local hard drives.
4. Find and remove any folders named "WUTemp" on all local drives.
5. Run a full disk Scan and then Defrag on all drives.

You can also move or remove programs you no longer use/need to free up
space. As a rule of thumb you should always have 20% of the total drive
capacity free. (As an example, for a 30GB partition you would want to keep
at least 6 GB free at all times.)

--

....Sky

Tom "Sky" King
=============

 

[caos]

Thanks for your reply, Sky!

My experiences are based upon at least four different computers,
running everything from Win98 to XP and thus hardware ranges from
obsolete to brand new. The oldest have 56K modem connection and the
newer ones 2Mb and 10Mb connections respectively. Disk space
shouldn't be an issue as the patches rarely are bigger than a few Mb
and at least the new computers have Gigs galore free.

A "Very Long Time", as Pooh would have put it, is the difference
between the time WU consumes during a security patch installation and
the time it takes to make a typical security patch installation 'by
hand', that is, run the setup program after having downloaded the patch
from the link supplied by the relevant Microsoft's KB article. Such a
manual installation usually takes less than a minute. WU can happily
spend tens of minutes in the installation phase if you have a slow
line. According to the progress bar the updates are already downloaded
by then, but based on the above I have a feeling it sends/downloads
stuff during the installation phase too. Anyone who can confirm or deny
this?

 

[Sky King]

A "Very Long Time", as Pooh would have put it, is the difference
between the time WU consumes during a security patch installation and
the time it takes to make a typical security patch installation 'by
hand', that is, run the setup program after having downloaded the
patch from the link supplied by the relevant Microsoft's KB article.
Such a manual installation usually takes less than a minute. WU can
happily spend tens of minutes in the installation phase if you have a
slow line. According to the progress bar the updates are already
downloaded by then, but based on the above I have a feeling it
sends/downloads stuff during the installation phase too. Anyone who
can confirm or deny this?

Keep in mind that WU is installing those updates as a background process
(usually) so some increase in the time it takes would be expected. Having
your antivirus software doing real-time scanning will also slow down the
install process --- which is OK, since you want that protection. And, yes,
there is some information going both ways when you visit Windows Update.
See http://v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/v5consumer/privacy.aspx for
details on that.

As for other downloads, the WU controls are updated when you initially visit
the site, not during a download/install of an update.

HTH

--

....Sky

Tom "Sky" King
=============