Windows update taking forever :-(

Windows update taking forever to complete is an issue all sysadmins and Windows computer owner experience at some point. How to fix it? There are many factors that can make Windows update run slowly. Below are my top list of suggestions that genuinely do help.

• Restart your computer. The obvious solution that most people discount but it does work. It can free resources or reset processes that are failing.
  
• Check your system drive for free space and free some up if possible. Lack of free space can cause issues; the Windows update process downloads updates and uses temporary space. Aim for at least 10GB of free space.
  

• Resetting Windows update is another method that can be used to resolve Windows update issues. See my post on resetting Windows update. This process completely resets updates, removing local files so can be useful when there are corruptions with the local cache for example.
  
• Check you don’t have the dreaded 0x800f0831 error, if so see my process for resolving.

In summary to fix slow Windows updates, try restarting your computer, freeing up 10GB of space on the system drive, resetting Windows Update, and checking for error 0x800f0831.