Windows Won't Update After New Hard Drive Installation

zeke15

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Jan 27, 2016
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So my the hard drive in my Dad's laptop crashed about two weeks ago. It originally came with windows 7, but he updated to windows 10 about 6 months ago. It was refurbished and under a new warranty so he called Dell and they sent him a new Hard Drive that had a preloaded version of Windows 7 installed on it. He replaced the bad hard drive with the new one and it booted fine with no issues.

Like any fresh installation of windows, it needed to search for and install updates. However, it spent nearly 14 hours in the windows update manager with "searching for updates" displaying, yet gaining no progress. He tried to force it to update by installing microsoft service packs, it still wouldn't update. He later found an aspect that he could update to windows 10 (even though it was past July 29), but that wouldn't work either. Essentially, his computer is just constantly searching for windows updates after he installed the new hard drive, no matter what he does, it can't find the updates that are there.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to why this is happening, or how to solve it?

(He also plans to contact Dell again about getting a hard drive installed with windows 10, because that is what he had before the previous drive crashed)

Thanks Everyone!
 
Solution
I have done hundreds of Windows 7 installations and I can guarantee that it always takes ages. The spec of the PC seems to affect the duration, with high specced PC being faster than low specced. I have seen some take over 24 hours.

I would personally leave it running and make sure your PC cannot goto sleep.

Rabmac

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Nov 29, 2015
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This is normal, tell your dad just to leave it and Windows will update. If he has service pack 1 installed then he only has two big waits for updates and once these are done the rest are fine.

Just remember to go to power options and make sure the PC does not turn off or go to sleep.
 

zeke15

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Jan 27, 2016
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At first we thought it was normal too, but when it was still searching for updates 14 hours later, we thought someting was wrong. Are you sure that's all it is?
 

Rabmac

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Nov 29, 2015
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I have done hundreds of Windows 7 installations and I can guarantee that it always takes ages. The spec of the PC seems to affect the duration, with high specced PC being faster than low specced. I have seen some take over 24 hours.

I would personally leave it running and make sure your PC cannot goto sleep.
 
Solution

zeke15

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Jan 27, 2016
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Alright, we left it on overnight and into the next day and it worked! A couple hundred updates are installing. Thanks for your help!