windows updates rarely finish, take forever

Moved to the Software Forum since this is not a malware question.

You need to tell people what kind of connection you have (dial-up, cable, DSL,...etc). Also how much memory do you have?

 

Hi Sheena

Also if when the updates fail, do they have an error code associated with them if so what as that can lead to the cause?

At times a 3rd party software firewall can cause this so possibly disable your firewall to test.

If you are using the inbuilt Windows Update, try the browser version at Microsoft Update but only works in the main with Internet Explorer which you should try it with first as using another browser and adding an tweaks to allow access to Windows Update could mask an underlying issue.

 

Go to windows Update using the link in the Program lisitngs and select Custom, not Express. It might take a while to scan your computer and list all the updates. Do not select all the updates. Start at the top and select until you have files in the range you can expect to download with no problem. If your ISP cuts you off after a certain period of time, then select whatever you can download in the time frame. If 2 MB takes an hour and your ISP cuts you off at 59 minutes, then select files under 2MB total.
Do this every few days until you are now up to date.

If you have a friend on broadband, see if they are willing to download SP3 for you. If you install that before you go to the windows update site, you will have far fewer updates to do.

I bought a new XP computer recently that already had SP3 on it and yet I needed 55 updates! I did not download them all at once, even though I'm on a fast connection. I did 10 at a time and rebooted just to be sure that everything was working before I selected the next 10 in the list.