Have you stuck with Windows 7 and experienced problems with the updater? Does it stubbornly keep searching for updates for hours only to come up empty or simply refuse to install any new updates?

And if so how have you solved these issues.

Share your stories with this apparently increasingly common problem.

Yes and no, never had a problem with update.

There is a client update available from MS which may help.

Nope, I've disabled the automatic updates since a while, due to MS untrustworthy behaviour.

Haven't had an issue yet.

No problems here. I disabled auto-updates and run it manually when I know they're out. Works as it always did for me. Having said that, I have had a problem like you describe with MSE trying to update its database from time to time and the program ends up just hanging until reboot. It happens only once in a while, but just limited to that one program trying to update its database.

I had that when I tried to update my new computer early on in the year. I downloaded an update from Microsoft to fix it. It was probably this one.

Actually, searching for a solution to my updating woes. I came upon this webpage.

Seems like the perfect solution for those who very wisely, distrust microsoft.

Of course the solution involves personally curating the downloaded updates, but at least you have that option. My current problem is with a laptop. This morning I reset it to factory settings and started updating it.

After a couple sucessful updates, including (allegedly) SP1 it got stuck in the searching for updates phase.

I disable updates as soon as I get the OS installed, so I can't say I've ever had update issues.

Of course when the Windows 10 nagware started popping up everywhere except on my machines seemed like a good reason to keep up what I'm doing; Even if I can't install some things without manually copying dll's.

I've never had any problems with the updates.

Always fun when we make a new install, tell it to update and it says "looking for updates" for anywhere between 2 and 6 hours, and then failing to install because it required a restart (tell me beforehand, you dumbfuck!), and when it does manage to install, it requires multiple searches for new updates and consecutive restarts, because some updates have to be fully installed before others even get displayed as available.

While Debian takes at most a minute getting the list of packages from the server, figuring out which ones you have installed and which of those have a newer version -regardless of how many packages actually have updates- and then happily installs everything in one go.

I mean, I have less annoyance with a damned netbook running Manjaro that don't even have enough free drive space to store all updates (depending on how long I wait between checks) so I have to install them a few at a time and then clear the package cache in between.

One small problem,updates take a while trying to make a system restore save.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Get simplix. Current version is here. You can even add it to your Win7 image for when you wish to install Windows from scratch.
WSUS is an excellent alternative as well, though it may be a bit more of a hassle to find, download and install the updates.

Well, I disabled WU and download the update packs from Winfuture.

Bookmarked these myself:

Solution 1
Solution 2 (more about it)

Warning that as of the October Patch Tuesday, there's no telling how or if anything will keep working.