Windows Update is stupid and annoying

[Steven P. Administrators]

Trying to round off a Mini PC review, because I have a backlog

image name Screenshot 2025-12-17 112818.png

Image name: Screenshot 2025-12-17 113713.png

Note the above image names, 9 minutes between taking those screenshots, and as I write this post it is still stuck on Downloading 7%

Why does Windows Update still suck after all this time?

Internet: 4Gbit Fibreglass, Mini PC 2.5GbE over 10GbE LAN.

[Ready2018]

This is down to MS not showing you the actual progress, it should be saying preparing to download until the actual download starts.

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 17/12/2025 at 11:56, Ready2018 said:

This is down to MS not showing you the actual progress, it should be saying preparing to download until the actual download starts.

Yeah it's just really annoying.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

The guy that helped build the original progress bar explains why it's like that:

 

But yeah, Windows as a whole is frustrating these days. I'm only booting into it to play games, and hopefully when I get Steam sorted on Linux I'll be 99.9% of the time on that. I'm tired of them making us the testers, and for them trying to foist their AI on me..

EDIT: I understand that the video above is about file transfers rather than downloading updates. But the point stands: they've dropped the ball too often and I'm getting out when I can.

[Steven P. Administrators]

I rebooted while it was stuck on 7% downloading, and 1.5hr later it is now at 41% installing.

Beyond frustrating!!

[cork1958]

Exactly why I have Linux on 8 out of 10 machines here! When and if the 2 unsupported computers that have Windows 11 on them get messed up from a Windows update, those 2 will be on Linux also.

Heck, I can install Linux, get it all updated and be fully using it quicker than Windows installs their updates. Ticks me off to no end.

[Ixion]

On the positive side, you can download the update faster from Microsoft update catalogue if you're really time pressured and these days it's just a single cumulative update and not hundreds of individual KBs with reboots inbetween like it was back in the Windows 7/8 days.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

Can I ask what processor the system has?  Perhaps if it is a lower-end SKU that could explain the delays.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

[farmeunit]

You don't have to sit there and watch it...

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 17/12/2025 at 17:57, goretsky said:

Hello,

Can I ask what processor the system has?  Perhaps if it is a lower-end SKU that could explain the delays.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

It's a AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U. In the end I gave up, after trying the Standalone installer (which is the image in response to Nick H) I disabled Windows Updates by delaying them a week and turned it off.

Literally hours wasted on this nonsense.,

[Nick H. Supervisor]

On 17/12/2025 at 18:18, farmeunit said:

You don't have to sit there and watch it...

It's not about sitting there and keeping an eye on it. It's just the infuriating length of time it takes to do an update, and the bloat that they shove in with each update. Time-wise, it takes me back to the 56k modem days. And what do I get from the update? A security update and a load of rubbish that I won't use...

[grunger106]

I'd be looking at the DO stats via PowerShell, see what's actually happening. (unless you've disabled DO)
Potentially you have a slow peer locally.

[C:Amie]

It isn't just you. They've don't something to 25H2 that is slowing both download and inertial times. I had an idle i7-8700/32GB/512GB take 4 hours to patch. If you look in C: \windows\softwaredistribution\downloads you'll find hundreds of thousands of little files. My speculative guess is that live patch updates are being forced to churn through each of these individually. There is no CPU or disk load while it does this and even bandwidth use is fairly minimal.

 

The problem is that if you only have the machine in for brief periods, it's constantly falling to install because the shutdown button doesn't change too "update and shutdown" for hours into the process. 

[eiffel_g]

Starting this summer something is wrong with WU. I had issues at home and a work. Windows 10 22H2 ( before and after ESU ), Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2... Had to try several times to update until it succed. Usually first updates gives an error related to file coruption, but SFC / Scannow says it's all ok... BITS service goes from Automatic (delayed ) to manual by itself... Need to restart during update...

But, I never had an issue with downloading the updates. While, yes displaying the progress it;s kinda tricky.  It might show 20% for ever, but if you close the setting windows and open again it will show a bigger value.

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 18/12/2025 at 11:57, eiffel_g said:

But, I never had an issue with downloading the updates. While, yes displaying the progress it;s kinda tricky.  It might show 20% for ever, but if you close the setting windows and open again it will show a bigger value.

Yeah, isn't it strange after all these years and an Insider Program for a decade and core functions like this are still buggy as hell? And now they are moving Store apps to it!

[Xenon]

Can we all just admit that windows 11 is stupid and annoying.  In fact Microsoft is stupid and VERY annoying. 

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

On 18/12/2025 at 15:40, Xenon said:

Can we all just admit that windows 11 is stupid and annoying.  In fact Microsoft is stupid and VERY annoying. 

Sadly Windows is pretty much a gateway for Microsoft's cloud services at this point.

It's weird to think the opinion of us enthusiasts doesn't really matter these days, its businesses paying for Azure and Office 365 where the money for Microsoft is now. Providing Windows can be made usable enough for businesses with group policies, any actual happy consumers are just a bonus it seems. 

Same with hardware, its probably way easier and more profitable for Nvidia to all their GPU's to Sam Altman & Co. Micron have pretty much come out and said that already in regards to ram.

[Dustyn]

On 18/12/2025 at 10:40, Xenon said:

Can we all just admit that windows 11 is stupid and annoying.  In fact Microsoft is stupid and VERY annoying. 

Windows 8 was stupid and annoying.

Windows 8.1 was better... but Microsoft was stupid for creating an 8.1 version to begin with.

Windows 7 should have just had another Service Pack  or two and call it a day.

[neufuse Veteran]

On 17/12/2025 at 11:57, goretsky said:

Hello,

Can I ask what processor the system has?  Perhaps if it is a lower-end SKU that could explain the delays.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

I see this same exact issue with my Intel 285K on a 2Gbps internet connection, also at times... it's just MS throttling their bandwidth with their bit streaming services....... it's freaking annoying

[d0x360]

On 17/12/2025 at 06:31, Nick H. said:

The guy that helped build the original progress bar explains why it's like that:

 

But yeah, Windows as a whole is frustrating these days. I'm only booting into it to play games, and hopefully when I get Steam sorted on Linux I'll be 99.9% of the time on that. I'm tired of them making us the testers, and for them trying to foist their AI on me..

EDIT: I understand that the video above is about file transfers rather than downloading updates. But the point stands: they've dropped the ball too often and I'm getting out when I can.

What do you mean annoying these days? It's been annoying all the days. every version of Windows all the days. At least Microsoft has done well enough that they've never gotten back to Windows Millennium levels of bad. You have to use that with a watch and when it hits 26 minutes you better save & reboot because it's probably going to crash and reboot for you in 2 minutes.

Little child me was very sad about it. Adult child me is still very sad about it too quite frankly.. can't a guy just play some need for speed?

[Brandon H Supervisor]

god I'm so tired of windows. if it weren't for iGPU sharing limitations on the Dell micro computer I'm using for my server, I wouldn't have moved my homelab setup off of Proxmox back to Windows. Though I figured out some good tricks to make updates properly headless via scheduled powershell scripts lol

[astropheed Veteran]

I've all but completely dropped windows. It got progressively worse every year to the point I finally snapped and bought a M3 MBP. I still use windows for gaming, media server, and because of my GPU local LLMs, but other than that I use my Mac for literally everything else and it has been truly excellent.

I'm going on about 1.5 years full time and the number of issues I've had (even minor annoyances) are sitting at: ZERO. It does exactly what I tell it to do, it doesn't restart itself and it's incredibly fast. I also bought my Wife an M4 MBP a few months back and she said she'll never go back to windows.

I will be buying a PS5 later on in the year and getting rid of windows entirely, linux will do everything my Mac doesn't do just fine. Windows is just not for the user anymore, they make their money elsewhere and it shows.

 

[tsupersonic]

Windows update does work ok for me, but I also turn off delivery optimization - which may be your issue? 

I'm sick and tired of Windows, more from a privacy standpoint. I still have PC's w/ Windows, but I daily Linux

[Fraud OS 11]

Microsoft screwed up the Windows servicing stack and update mechanism 10 years ago itself with Windows Vista. The Component Based Servicing is an epic failure. XP's earlier Update Installer was still fast compared to the painfully slow connections we had at that time and didn't waste the user's time with "Please wait while we configure updates...."

[Ixion]

XP updates on a new machine took forever whilst it downloaded hundreds of updates all dependent on each other, it was nothing like as fast as "apply the latest cumulative" we have today.