The pain of windows updates on dormant PC's

[Suff]

I have an image of a Windows7 machine which I have not run since 2011. I need to get it up to date because I want to use it to access my work email. My work being somewhat arcane about these things.

Windows update was reporting that it was not running. In the end I had to reinitialise everything and delete all the existing update files. The Windows update troubleshooter had failed and I was down to the nuts and bolts.

Once I had done that, the first thing it did was to download, install and update the installer engine. Which was the initial problem.

Now I'm going through purgatory of having to do the updates in small chunks. There were nearly 400 of them and 1.7gigbytes. But because there are dependencies on older updates, I was getting backouts constantly, taking up to an hour or more to back out to the login screen.

Now I'm doing updates in blocks. Office updates work fine and install all in one go. Windows updates I'm having to do in small blocks. 20 - 40. Updates first. Security updates now. All the rest later.

Morale of the story? Keep your updates up to date and if you want another machine install a new one unless you have an extremely compelling reason to keep the old one.

Here is the cmd file I had to write to re-baseline my updates. It might be useful.

net stop wuauserv
net stop bits
net stop cryptsvc
pause
ren %systemroot%\System32\Catroot2 Catroot2.old
ren %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.old
pause

regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\vbscript.dll /s

regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\mshtml.dll /s

regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\msjava.dll /s

regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\jscript.dll /s

regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\msxml.dll /s

regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\actxprxy.dll /s

regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\shdocvw.dll /s

regsvr32 wuapi.dll /s

regsvr32 wuaueng1.dll /s

regsvr32 wuaueng.dll /s

regsvr32 wucltui.dll /s

regsvr32 wups2.dll /s

regsvr32 wups.dll /s

regsvr32 wuweb.dll /s

regsvr32 Softpub.dll /s

regsvr32 Mssip32.dll /s

regsvr32 Initpki.dll /s

regsvr32 softpub.dll /s

regsvr32 wintrust.dll /s

regsvr32 initpki.dll /s

regsvr32 dssenh.dll /s

regsvr32 rsaenh.dll /s

regsvr32 gpkcsp.dll /s

regsvr32 sccbase.dll /s

regsvr32 slbcsp.dll /s

regsvr32 cryptdlg.dll /s

regsvr32 Urlmon.dll /s

regsvr32 Shdocvw.dll /s

regsvr32 Msjava.dll /s

regsvr32 Actxprxy.dll /s

regsvr32 Oleaut32.dll /s

regsvr32 Mshtml.dll /s

regsvr32 msxml.dll /s

regsvr32 msxml2.dll /s

regsvr32 msxml3.dll /s

regsvr32 Browseui.dll /s

regsvr32 shell32.dll /s

regsvr32 wuapi.dll /s

regsvr32 wuaueng.dll /s

regsvr32 wuaueng1.dll /s

regsvr32 wucltui.dll /s

regsvr32 wups.dll /s

regsvr32 wuweb.dll /s

regsvr32 jscript.dll /s

regsvr32 atl.dll /s

regsvr32 Mssip32.dll /s

pause
net start wuauserv
net start bits
net start cryptsvc

It's easier than sending you to the page. I had to assemble it from the information on that page.

[Workingman]

Lol.

I have the older installer that worked with W95/XP stuff and renamed as .old as well as the newer W7 version. It allows me to install some of my old favourites on W7 by renaming the new one .old and removing .old from the old one. The old one will not install newer programs and vice-versa.

I do updates about once a month, but only download and install the really necessary ones.

A little program I have is FileMenu Tools. It adds a sub-menu to the right click from where you can run commands directly from each file. Commands can be added or removed as you like.

Did you not think of downloading an UPDATE pack from a third party to a working computer and then burning a disc? I got one from here.

[Suff]

Did you not think of downloading an UPDATE pack from a third party to a working computer and then burning a disc? I got one from here.

After I'd fixed it yes and then I was in the middle of just updating it so just carried on.....

[Workingman]

Due to the number and frequency of Mr Soft's updates these 3rd party compilations are not up-to-date, but they are close enough, if you get the latest version, to cut down the overall download..... and you can delete any crap you don't want before updating.

Do keep up.

[Suff]

Do keep up.

Quite. My incurable geek rating is in danger. Although fixing it yourself the hard way tends to be more in the geek class than in the user class....

I'll keep that in mind, I'm the technology resource for the family. Everyone, including the son's who build their own machines and do ITC courses, wind up coming back to me.

I try to keep them all doing updates regularly so we don't see this. Even Mrs S has taken that one on board although I do have to update her AV from time to time as she often doesn't stay on it long enough for it to update.