When installing Windows 7 there are close to or more than 200 hotfixes required for it to be up to date, even when installing Windows 7 SP1. How can I speed up the process of installing all these hotfixes?
2 Answers
You can download updates for Windows 7 from Microsoft here. Download the required updates and put them all in the same folder. Some updates must be kept in their original download folder since they contain several files - install these manually or via a separate script. These msu files are Windows Update Standalone Installer files. See refs: 1 and 2.
To run msu files silently without any interaction try the following:
- Open an admin level command prompt. It is crucial that it is admin level
- CD to the folder containing the hotfixes, make sure the prompt shows the full, correct path.
- Then run one of these commands depending on your OS (first one for 64-bit computer, second one for older x86 computers. Not sure if a 64-bit computer also needs some x86 hotfixes. Just do a single star *.msu to install all hotfixes):
for %h in (*x64*.msu) do start /wait wusa "%cd%\%h" /quiet /norestart
for %h in (*x86*.msu) do start /wait wusa "%cd%\%h" /quiet /norestart
Some hotfixes have prerequisites, some hotfix are deprecated, and some are outdated. Especially those relating to IE. You can run the command a couple of times to account for some of these variables. Check in the event viewer (configuration view) what hotfixes installed and which failed by error code.
Trench tip: No responsibility accepted, but when I install a fresh computer I disable system restore to speed things up and avoid too many unnecessary system images from being created during hotfix installation. I would not recommend this, it is easy to forget to reactivate, but it does speed things up significantly. For a computer in use (as opposed to fresh build), I would never do this.
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wusa is the slowest version to install Updates. extract the MSU to a CAB and use DISM to install them. This is MUCH faster. Apr 28, 2014 at 4:30
There is a tool specifically made for this, called RTSe7enLite. You can also use it to make your installation custom or unattended. Check it out and don't hesitate to ask if you need other information.