Gah! Windows 8 update

[Funkstar]

Why is Windows Update on W8 so painfully terrible??

Got a new laptop for the wife before she starts a degree next month (Scottish Cultural Studies with the University of the Highland and Islands) and i've been fighting with it all evening because of Windows Update.

It's a Samsung Ativ Book 9 Lite, nice laptop actually.

I went into Windows Update and it sat thinking about getting me a list for probably an hour, then showed 90 updates. Fine. Install the updates. then something went wrong and it was reverting one or more updates, but that just seemed to hang it for a few hours not doing anything. So after a factory restore I started again. Same thing, it takes forever to get the update list then when i select just a few updates at a time it takes forever with "Pepairing to install..." or to download them. this really is a torturous experience.

I just hope that when I'm done and can install 8.1 everything goes smoothly and they have fixed whatever issues I'm having just now.

[deejayburnout]

why not wipe it and put W7 on it?

my experience with windows 8 is terrible. ok it looks nice but i had driver issues and gaming issues with it.

never tried 8.1 though.

[Phage]

Agree on the process. I left mine running overnight to get the installs done. I've not had any issues on gaming ever though.

[Funkstar]

Well that was annoying.

Came back to it this morning and it was still "Preparing to install" so I restarted and it configured Windows, so clearly it had installed, Windows Update had just got stuck. Now doing batched of 5 or 6 at a time and they are installing much easier, so clearly there has been an update to Windows Update in amongst the ones I've already done.

[MrRockliffe]

As soon as 8.1 came out I upgraded. 8 was pretty much beta of 8.1

I was a big windows 7 fan, but one day it just stopped working on my machine and I didn't have a bootable 7 USB but had a windows 8 USB that I had made for friends and family. I installed it and once I had Start Is Back running I couldn't tell the difference. Even a mate of mine didn't notice until I went into the 'new' start menu (something that I don't and won't use). He thought I had installed a theme on it.

8 and 8.1 boots much quicker and is much smoother and lighter as an OS. Everyone complains about it but I now much prefer it to 7.

[deejayburnout]

i might try 8.1 as i am due a new OS install as it keeps crashing at the moment.

[fuddam]

Got win 8 when it first came out. Upgraded to Win 8.1 when launched, and definite stability improvement in my case. Win 8 has that insane update procedure initially, but once all downloaded, not been an issue since.

Now busy rolling out Win 8.1 to 800 users in London (together with Office 365 and Lync 2013). All good, IME.

[Funkstar]

Everything seems to have settled down and I've what looks to be all the important updates. Might just do a few of the others a night until they are all gone. (loads of .NET 3 and 4 updates in the list).

8.1 is also on the cards, but the download was being very slow the other night. I think it was also interfering with Amazon instant streaming on out 8mbit line.

[Funkstar]

Updated the laptop to 8.1, and although it took an extremely long time to download, install, update, finalise, install a few more things, get started.... yadda yadda yadda.... I'm impressed with the update.

The app store is much better, Windows Update works as it should, the UI has been tweaked just enough to make it way more user friendly.