Installing Update #11 of 137 — for 7 hours so far.

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I recently updated 3 computers using a Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack. Each one went differently. So far, I have success with 2 of them.

The one I updated from Windows 7 Starter brought in everything from the Internet after I clicked on “Windows Anytime Upgrade” in Control Panel — good because the computer is a netbook w/o optical drive. (I had tried unsuccessfully to copy from the Family pack DVD to a flashdrive — “cannot copy from bootable disk.”) The upgrade only took an hour or so and all it needed from the Family Pack was the product key. The dual-boot Ubuntu Linux installation on this machine even remained untouched. I had to do a couple of manual restarts because the dual boot automatically boots into Linux,

Computer #2, I updated using the boot drive I’d swapped out of another computer which already had a Windows 7 Home Premium installation. This computer wouldn’t start with that previous installation, but the Family Pack did recognize it as qualifying for the upgrade, and after 8 hours or so of installing updates, I had a clean installation — that is, it deleted the earlier installation, with all program files and data. But I’d backed up what I needed to keep.

The third computer was happy to update from Vista Home Premium, creating a Windows 7 Home Premium installation with all programs and data intact. On the other hand, after one manual restart wher I still saw the Linux options, it rewrote the boot sector, and while partitions I’d created for Ubuntu Linux to dual-boot are still present, there is no way to access them. Good enough, I can reinstall Linux. But then — when I shut down the computer, it indicated that it had to install 137 updates. It got to Update #11 and has been on that update for about 7 hours, with the message “Do not turn off or unplug your computer. Installing Update #11 of 137.” There was disk activity indicating updates for a while but now the hard drive LED now only flashes once per second.

What update takes that long? Will it ever finish? What should I do?

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The update most likely hung up. I suppose you can try it again, but the problem could be the original upgrade from Vista to Win 7. Years ago I had some problems with upgrades and have switched to Custom installs instead.

Perhaps a reboot and a second attempt would work. I would also choose just a few updates at a time rather than all 137.

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One correction: the long wait occurred when I shut the computer down, not when I started it. I’ve edited the original post to make that correction

I never selected these updates. They appeared unbidden. I usually set Windows Update to download updates and then have me select them, but this was a new installation and I hadn’t done that setting yet.

And — I finally noticed as I was going to bed — after about 15 hours — that the computer had completed what it was doing and shut itself down.

I am now using that computer — a 2009 HP Pavilion dv4 laptop. This morning, it booted into Windows after one restart, 35% of the way through the Configuring Windows routine. The configuring on restart took only a couple of minutes, but looking at Windows Update again now, I see that it has another 128 important updates for me. First time I looked this morning there were 4 but now I looked again and there are 128.

Moral of the story is: don’t expect to be able to use a computer with Windows for a couple of days after upgrading. And to Microsoft: it would be good to provide more complete information including estimated time to completion, with the option to update later if that will be long. Many of the updates affect security and it would be useful to warn of that.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea also to save a system image in case anything goes wrong in the middle of this long process.

Also — about the netbook which updated from the Internet using Windows Anytime Upgrade without losing the dual-boot Linux installation: the dual boot will automatically boot into Linux unless prompted on startup, so I had to do a couple of manual restarts during the upgrade. I’ve made that correction too in the original post.

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