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Question

window7 updates

Jan 1, 2016 6:48AM PST

hi guys,
i put new ssd harddrive in my laptop, reinstalled windows7 and waited for windows to update, which took a long time,
so next time to save some time, could i copy all the windows updates onto a usb stick, then reinstalled windows7 and put the updates from the usb to my laptop myself,
if so where do i find the windows update downloads?

thanks for your time, bluesfloyd.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Yes you can, but it won't save a lot of time.
Jan 1, 2016 7:13AM PST

You can download the updates manually from Microsoft's web site and put them on a flash drive if you wish. However it won't save much, if any, time because for starters it's a tedious manual process to do the downloads one by one, and there are a pot full of them. Then you'll either have to write a BAT file to automate the installs or go through the time consuming tedious process of installing them one by one. So unless you have a really really slow download speed, it could end up taking longer than just using Windows Update. This is the voice of experience. I've done this where I had to go to a couple of sites with 1.5 Mbps download DSL speeds and 7 PCs shared that 1.5 Mbps. When these sites upgraded to 6 Mbps service per PC, I no longer saw a benefit. YMMV.
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Good luck.

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updates
Jan 1, 2016 8:11AM PST

hi ,
thanks for your reply,
just need to know, i have got the updates onto a usb stick from my laptop from softwareDistribution/downloads folder, could i just use them again, if i did reinstall windows7 os, yes/no ???

all the best, bluesfloyd.

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I don't believe those are in a reusable form.
Jan 1, 2016 8:24AM PST

They're certainly very different from the KBnnnnnn format that the downloads come in, so I doubt if you could reuse them. They probably require registry changes when installed.

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Answer
W7
Jan 1, 2016 7:56AM PST

Now that you have w7 and the updates loaded think about a backup and restore method so that you rarely need to start from bare metal.