Secretive MS download?

[mm]

(P.S. Thank you all for your help on my young friend's Averatec
Laptop with multiple XP problems. Right now, he's backing up all his
data files to CD, or maybe to free online Google storage, and then
we're going to do a System Restore to the factory checkpoint. )


But now I have another question. My own XP computer is downloading
something but it's unusually secretive about it.

In the past when there was a yellow shield with what looks like an
exclaimation point ! in the middle of it, it meant they wanted to send
MS updates, and I could right click on the icon, then fill in the
radio button Custom, and then look at all the updates they list, and
pick and choose, but I would just say Yes to all of them, and it would
dl the updates. Even while it was doing that, I could click on the
icon and get a screen with messages of how many things completed and a
progress bar.

This time, neither left or right clicking on the icon brings up
anything. When I first put the cursor over the icon, it says
"Downloading updates; nn%" and it moves very slowly, taking an hour to
go from 10 to 12 percent, and gradually increasing, spanning windows
sessions where I exit windows and then restart it, more than once.

What's it doing? Why does it take far longer than other updates? Is
Is it replacing XP with Linux? Should I try to stop it? Why won't
it let me look at it at the start or now?

Thanks.

 

[Big_Al]

mm said this on 6/11/2010 1:47 AM:
> (P.S. Thank you all for your help on my young friend's Averatec
> Laptop with multiple XP problems. Right now, he's backing up all his
> data files to CD, or maybe to free online Google storage, and then
> we're going to do a System Restore to the factory checkpoint. )
>
>
> But now I have another question. My own XP computer is downloading
> something but it's unusually secretive about it.
>
> In the past when there was a yellow shield with what looks like an
> exclaimation point ! in the middle of it, it meant they wanted to send
> MS updates, and I could right click on the icon, then fill in the
> radio button Custom, and then look at all the updates they list, and
> pick and choose, but I would just say Yes to all of them, and it would
> dl the updates. Even while it was doing that, I could click on the
> icon and get a screen with messages of how many things completed and a
> progress bar.
>
> This time, neither left or right clicking on the icon brings up
> anything. When I first put the cursor over the icon, it says
> "Downloading updates; nn%" and it moves very slowly, taking an hour to
> go from 10 to 12 percent, and gradually increasing, spanning windows
> sessions where I exit windows and then restart it, more than once.
>
> What's it doing? Why does it take far longer than other updates? Is
> Is it replacing XP with Linux? Should I try to stop it? Why won't
> it let me look at it at the start or now?
>
> Thanks.

My only input is that Tuesdays updates were a lot. I'm going out on a
limb and saying like 20 updates. Now I don't know your download speed
but on a slower system that could take time.
One thing I noticed is that when I went in and did the updates manually,
if I expanded the explanation of the update, it gave me "0 of 0 bytes"
as size and then the explanation of "update already downloaded and will
be installed." Or something like that. Again, I'm guessing that I
rushed the auto download, and now on the manual, it was just finishing
the job. And it did.

You might try looking at the manual download and look at the details of
every update to see if some have 0 of 0 bytes. But I saw nothing
"secretive"

 

[mm]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 07:41:50 -0400, Big_Al <BigAl@name.invalid> wrote:

>
>mm said this on 6/11/2010 1:47 AM:
>> (P.S. Thank you all for your help on my young friend's Averatec
>> Laptop with multiple XP problems. Right now, he's backing up all his
>> data files to CD, or maybe to free online Google storage, and then
>> we're going to do a System Restore to the factory checkpoint. )
>>
>>
>> But now I have another question. My own XP computer is downloading
>> something but it's unusually secretive about it.
>>
>> In the past when there was a yellow shield with what looks like an
>> exclaimation point ! in the middle of it, it meant they wanted to send
>> MS updates, and I could right click on the icon, then fill in the
>> radio button Custom, and then look at all the updates they list, and
>> pick and choose, but I would just say Yes to all of them, and it would
>> dl the updates. Even while it was doing that, I could click on the
>> icon and get a screen with messages of how many things completed and a
>> progress bar.
>>
>> This time, neither left or right clicking on the icon brings up
>> anything. When I first put the cursor over the icon, it says
>> "Downloading updates; nn%" and it moves very slowly, taking an hour to
>> go from 10 to 12 percent, and gradually increasing, spanning windows
>> sessions where I exit windows and then restart it, more than once.
>>
>> What's it doing? Why does it take far longer than other updates? Is
>> Is it replacing XP with Linux? Should I try to stop it? Why won't
>> it let me look at it at the start or now?
>>
>> Thanks.
>
>My only input is that Tuesdays updates were a lot. I'm going out on a

That must be it. I think I'm still working on Tuesday.

>limb and saying like 20 updates. Now I don't know your download speed
>but on a slower system that could take time.

I have low-speed DSL. I forget what speed that is.

>One thing I noticed is that when I went in and did the updates manually,
>if I expanded the explanation of the update, it gave me "0 of 0 bytes"
>as size and then the explanation of "update already downloaded and will
>be installed." Or something like that. Again, I'm guessing that I
>rushed the auto download, and now on the manual, it was just finishing
>the job. And it did.
>
>You might try looking at the manual download and look at the details of
>every update to see if some have 0 of 0 bytes. But I saw nothing
>"secretive"

It won't let me look at details or anything inside, not by left or
right single or double clicking on the yellow shield in the systray.
Nothing happens when I do either, like it always used to. That's the
secretive part.

(It might have been like this once before, maybe the first time 2
years ago.)

It's 6 hours 40 minutes since my last post. I havent' been doing any
up or downloading if that would slow it down. I forgot to say that I
was at 65% then and now I'm at 88%. 23 percent in 6 hours 40 minutes,
about 29 or 30 hours for the whole thing. Wow!

 

[mm]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 083:21 -0400, mm <NOPSAMmm2005@bigfoot.com>
wrote:

>On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 07:41:50 -0400, Big_Al <BigAl@name.invalid> wrote:
>
>>
>>mm said this on 6/11/2010 1:47 AM:
>>> (P.S. Thank you all for your help on my young friend's Averatec
>>> Laptop with multiple XP problems. Right now, he's backing up all his
>>> data files to CD, or maybe to free online Google storage, and then
>>> we're going to do a System Restore to the factory checkpoint. )
>>>
>>>
>>> But now I have another question. My own XP computer is downloading
>>> something but it's unusually secretive about it.
>>>
>>> In the past when there was a yellow shield with what looks like an
>>> exclaimation point ! in the middle of it, it meant they wanted to send
>>> MS updates, and I could right click on the icon, then fill in the
>>> radio button Custom, and then look at all the updates they list, and
>>> pick and choose, but I would just say Yes to all of them, and it would
>>> dl the updates. Even while it was doing that, I could click on the
>>> icon and get a screen with messages of how many things completed and a
>>> progress bar.
>>>
>>> This time, neither left or right clicking on the icon brings up
>>> anything. When I first put the cursor over the icon, it says
>>> "Downloading updates; nn%" and it moves very slowly, taking an hour to
>>> go from 10 to 12 percent, and gradually increasing, spanning windows
>>> sessions where I exit windows and then restart it, more than once.
>>>
>>> What's it doing? Why does it take far longer than other updates? Is
>>> Is it replacing XP with Linux? Should I try to stop it? Why won't
>>> it let me look at it at the start or now?
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>
>>My only input is that Tuesdays updates were a lot. I'm going out on a
>
>That must be it. I think I'm still working on Tuesday.
>
>>limb and saying like 20 updates. Now I don't know your download speed
>>but on a slower system that could take time.
>
>I have low-speed DSL. I forget what speed that is.
>
>>One thing I noticed is that when I went in and did the updates manually,
>>if I expanded the explanation of the update, it gave me "0 of 0 bytes"
>>as size and then the explanation of "update already downloaded and will
>>be installed." Or something like that. Again, I'm guessing that I
>>rushed the auto download, and now on the manual, it was just finishing
>>the job. And it did.
>>
>>You might try looking at the manual download and look at the details of
>>every update to see if some have 0 of 0 bytes. But I saw nothing
>>"secretive"
>
>It won't let me look at details or anything inside, not by left or
>right single or double clicking on the yellow shield in the systray.
>Nothing happens when I do either, like it always used to. That's the
>secretive part.
>
>(It might have been like this once before, maybe the first time 2
>years ago.)
>
>It's 6 hours 40 minutes since my last post. I havent' been doing any
>up or downloading if that would slow it down. I forgot to say that I
>was at 65% then and now I'm at 88%. 23 percent in 6 hours 40 minutes,
>about 29 or 30 hours for the whole thing. Wow!

Two hours later exactly and I'm at 91 percent. Two percent (1 to 3
percent) in two hours. That's 33 to 100 hours for the dl!!!

 

[Anthony Buckland]

"mm" <NOPSAMmm2005@bigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:uai416h701npnughuadalgpuvbldhr2pic@4ax.com...
> ...
> Two hours later exactly and I'm at 91 percent. Two percent (1 to 3
> percent) in two hours. That's 33 to 100 hours for the dl!!!
>

Just how slow a connection are we talking about?
There were some updates in this batch in the multiple
tens of megabytes IIRC, but nothing movie length. Of
the two machines I updated (twelve updates for one,
14 for the other) on a moderate (i.e. cheap) high speed
connection, even the oldest (2000 Compaq, 1 GHz,
512 MBy of RAM) managed the whole process
including installation in about an hour and a half.

If this thing ends up crashing at some point, I'd suggest
trying a repeat doing only a portion at a time, hell, maybe
one update at a time.

 

[mm]

On Sat, 12 Jun 2010 10:25:13 -0700, "Anthony Buckland"
<anthonybucklandnospam@telus.net> wrote:

>
>"mm" <NOPSAMmm2005@bigfoot.com> wrote in message
>news:uai416h701npnughuadalgpuvbldhr2pic@4ax.com...
>> ...
>> Two hours later exactly and I'm at 91 percent. Two percent (1 to 3
>> percent) in two hours. That's 33 to 100 hours for the dl!!!

It took ah nour or more after this before it got past 91 but it didn't
take 10 or even 4 hours to get to 100%, some time on Friday after
starting probably on Tuesday.
>
>Just how slow a connection are we talking about?

Low speed DSL

>There were some updates in this batch in the multiple
>tens of megabytes IIRC, but nothing movie length. Of
>the two machines I updated (twelve updates for one,
>14 for the other) on a moderate (i.e. cheap) high speed
>connection, even the oldest (2000 Compaq, 1 GHz,
>512 MBy of RAM) managed the whole process
>including installation in about an hour and a half.

That's how mine has worked in the past. The harddrive still has
plenty of space. Maybe I should defrag it? but I don't see how that
could add more than 10 or 20% to the time.

>If this thing ends up crashing at some point, I'd suggest
>trying a repeat doing only a portion at a time, hell, maybe
>one update at a time.

Unlike other times, I couldn't open any box or check Custom or not,
even when it was at 0%, or decide to do a partial update.

But it didn't crash, and I restarted the computer like it asked, and
it started another one -- that I also could't open -- within an hour
of restarting, which finished today.

Thanks