Microsoft has changed the way it deploys patches, adding a new twist to an old problem. For many folks, Windows 7 Update scans still take hours—even days. How do you knock your Win7 machine upside the head, so it will find new patches in less than glacial time? We have a new Microsoft-sanctioned approach that only needs to be tempered a little.
Note that, in the new patching paradigm, even those who manually download monthly security patches (“Group B”) still need to use Windows Update, if only for .Net patches, Office patches (for those who don’t have Office Click-to-Run), and other patches that don’t arrive as part of the Security-only Update. See, for example, this month’s KB 3200006 and KB 3199375, for Internet Explorer.
