Update woes, trials and tribulations

[gpsguy]

No need to send me anything. We all contribute our knowledge on the forum (even if it's not a FreeNAS issue).

If you want, donate a few Euro's to the WSUS Offline Update project.

Now where to send that monetary thank you?

I'm glad to hear that it resolved your problem.

Now you have another tool for your IT toolbox. Even if you're not battling the broken Windows update issue, you can still use the package you created to update a new Win 7 or build new ones for Win 8.1 and 10.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I didn't even know this was a problem

The symptom is that Checking for Updates seems to run forever, with one CPU core pegged at 100% and as much as 2GB of RAM consumed. Some reports suggest that it does eventually complete if you leave it long enough, but I've left it overnight without success. Then I found the magic combination that worked for me (a pruned version of what I found online), and I haven't had a recurrence.

 

[BigDave]

If you want, donate a few Euro's to the WSUS Offline Update project.

I will do that gladly!
Thanks again @gpsguy

 

[anodos]

No, it's not just the .msu files. In looking at the ISO I built for Vista, most of the files were .cab's and a few .msu's. The resulting file was about 2GB in size.

If you look at the doc's - http://www.wsusoffline.net/docs/, you use the GUI to generate a package (I chose the "Create ISO image") and once it was done, extracted the files with 7-zip and ran "Updateinstaller". IIRC, I might have had to re-run the latter multiple times, until nothing else installed.



For background - I manage ~150 Windows desktops (historically Win 7 Pro, though 125 are now running Win 10 Ent), for two organizations. I use WSUS to patch them and have never run into any issues. I even used to use WSUS at home on a 2003 Server (gave it up, when I switched to FreeNAS).

Approximately 6 months ago, I ran into issues with a few VM's at home, as well as my Vista Ultimate (don't laugh) laptop. If I tried to run MS update, it would try for hours/days and not update. I tried all "fixes" online and finally remembered the "WSUS offline" product. It worked like a charm. I created packages for both the OS and Office products.

In the last two months, there it's been discussed in several weekly issues of "WServerNews", for example: http://www.wservernews.com/newsletters/archives/wservernews-com-windows-7-updating-pain-15667.html In later issues, others have said that "WSUS offline" fixed it for them too.

Thanks for posting all this info. I ran into a similar problem with Vista a few months back, and decided the proper solution was to "burn it with fire". I'm glad that someone has the patience to sort through this mess. :D