Windows 10 Updates Take Forever!

Totally agree on Windows update being a frustrating experience. We have two machines and on the more powerful machine it can be anything between ten mins to thirty mins plus a lot of nail biting whilst it happens! Our flimsy BRIX box can take an hour ! Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if updates weren't shoved so regularly but MS pushes a lot down the pipe. Ok the last one was about 3 weeks ago but there is another about to hit us very soon which is in release preview. Personally I don't care for the relentless pace of updates none of which seem to make much difference with glaring bugs remaining unfixed through releases. I could definetely live without the frequency of them, many like them and embrace them - I think they are intrusive and a pain, jolting productivity and causing concern as to what they might break or how they could possibly unsettle what was an otherwise well functioning system before the dreaded 'update'

A simple feature that would make life much, much easier for most of us humble Windows 10 users would be receiving simply a message informing us OF THE SIZE of the update to be downloaded / installed. If we the humble users would KNOW the size of an update about to be downloaded / installed, we could plan around it, including attaching ourselves to a larger pipe if need be to get the update downloaded faster. IF WE HAVE NO IDEA how large the update is, WE CAN'T PLAN ...

Consider an analogy ... in recent years the U.S. Dept of Transportation has installed message boards along the nation's highways to inform users of the time required to get to various locations downstream from the sign. While not perfect, this allows most drivers to adapt to the conditions at hand. NOT KNOWING if a traffic tie-up was only a 1/4 mile long or ten miles long previously added to frustration. I believe that informing users that a particular update will be 10 GB as opposed to 10 MB would greatly improve user satisfaction ...

Otherwise, Windows Corp would continue to be hated for being like the "Phone Company" of Lily Tomlin / Laugh-in infamy:

"We don't care, we don't have to. We're the Phone Company" ;-)
-- Lily Tomlin

dkriz said:

A simple feature that would make life much, much easier for most of us humble Windows 10 users would be receiving simply a message informing us OF THE SIZE of the update to be downloaded / installed...

There's some info in the KB article for each update...

If you installed earlier updates, only the new fixes contained in this package will be downloaded and installed on your device...
...If you're installing a Windows 10 update for the first time, the package size for the X86 version is 566 MB and the package size for the x64 version is 1,106 MB.

March 20, 2017—KB4015438 (OS Build 14393.969)

dkriz said:

If we the humble users would KNOW the size of an update about to be downloaded / installed, we could plan around it, including attaching ourselves to a larger pipe if need be to get the update downloaded faster. IF WE HAVE NO IDEA how large the update is, WE CAN'T PLAN ...

That isn't the issue though really. Even as standard you can download the update and carry on working.

Perhaps it takes 5 minutes or 5 hours to download - it doesn't matter really.

What does matter and what we don't know is how long the upgrade process will take (i.e. when you click on "restart now" or "Shut down and upgrade"). That isn't linked to the size of the download though - it depends what copying etc the upgrade process is doing. Inevitably you'll be doing that when you want to leave for the day or go to bed or whatever.

Leaving it turned on overnight (and hoping the cleaner doesn't nick your laptop) seems to work. Just as it did with XP.

Bree said:
>dkriz said:

>>A simple feature that would make life much, much easier for most of us humble Windows 10 users would be receiving simply a >>message informing us OF THE SIZE of the update to be downloaded / installed...

> There's some info in the KB article for each update...

And where pray-tell can one find the KB article ... There's a little "Windows Notification" icon that lights up on the bottom left-hand-side of the screen whenever IT'S USED to "notify" us of things. Why won't the good folks at Microsoft just use that to inform us of THE SIZE of their upcoming updates or SEND A LINK VIA THAT SERVICE to the "KB article..."?

lx07 said:

That isn't the issue though really. Even as standard you can download the update and carry on working.

Perhaps it takes 5 minutes or 5 hours to download - it doesn't matter really.

What does matter and what we don't know is how long the upgrade process will take (i.e. when you click on "restart now" or "Shut down and upgrade"). That isn't linked to the size of the download though - it depends what copying etc the upgrade process is doing. Inevitably you'll be doing that when you want to leave for the day or go to bed or whatever.

Leaving it turned on overnight (and hoping the cleaner doesn't nick your laptop) seems to work. Just as it did with XP.

Yes, one CAN have one's internet effectively FREEZE while said update downloads onto one's machine while one's at a Starbucks, etc ... but even beside that, even after the update is downloaded onto one's device, one then is often asked to "restart the computer" so that the update could take hold ... YET WE'RE NOT TOLD HOW LONG THE COMPUTER WILL BE INSTALLING THE UPDATE. We're told its "30% done" or "57% done" and we're told, of course not to shut off our computer in the meantime ... But we're still not told if this is a 5 MB update or a 5 GB one and again that'd be important to know BEFORE one decides to shutdown / restart the computer so that the downloaded update could be installed.

dkriz said:

And where pray-tell can one find the KB article ... ?

Settings > Update & security > Windows Update > Learn more