What is the best way to get reloaded Windows 7 up to date?
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I had this recently. Took the entire weekend!
I have no answer except to say that back in the day, like decade+ ago, we used to do a trick to get the updates to be included in the actual install media. They would be installed along with the OS from the start.
Or do like Scott said and create a reference system that is up to date and then do the OEM install preparation routing thingy to turn it into an image that can install anywhere and won't be borked from preinstalled drivers and such. It prepares it as a clean system.
What I'm more surprised about is that MS doesn't offer any download that is already up to date to some degree. All we get is SP1. Now there is about 150GB of updates to do after that. Like 200+ individual updates.
So frustrating!
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@guyinpv said in What is the best way to get reloaded Windows 7 up to date?:
What I'm more surprised about is that MS doesn't offer any download that is already up to date to some degree. All we get is SP1. Now there is about 150GB of updates to do after that. Like 200+ individual updates.
I'm not surprised about this at all. MS wants to make it as painful as possible for you to stay in the past.
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@Dashrender said in What is the best way to get reloaded Windows 7 up to date?:
@guyinpv said in What is the best way to get reloaded Windows 7 up to date?:
What I'm more surprised about is that MS doesn't offer any download that is already up to date to some degree. All we get is SP1. Now there is about 150GB of updates to do after that. Like 200+ individual updates.
I'm not surprised about this at all. MS wants to make it as painful as possible for you to stay in the past.
This. MS will do nothing to make it easy. They have a ton of interest in making Windows 10 easy and Windows not-10 hard.
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@Dashrender said in What is the best way to get reloaded Windows 7 up to date?:
@guyinpv said in What is the best way to get reloaded Windows 7 up to date?:
What I'm more surprised about is that MS doesn't offer any download that is already up to date to some degree. All we get is SP1. Now there is about 150GB of updates to do after that. Like 200+ individual updates.
I'm not surprised about this at all. MS wants to make it as painful as possible for you to stay in the past.
But they didn't really have a solution to this even when Win7 was the latest thing!
I remember in my bench tech days, we did a lot of reloads, upgrading HDDs. We had a U-shaped desk system with KVMs so we could hook up like 8 systems. Most of the time it was new installs doing endless updates! KVM switch between machines just to click "Yes" to restarting after another batch of updates.
Every single app install wanted a restart too. -
Sure they did. They made service pack one. After that they came out with Windows 8. What's the next version of the operating system comes out Microsoft really doesn't give a shit about the old one. They put their big effort into making the move to the new version.
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@Dashrender said in What is the best way to get reloaded Windows 7 up to date?:
Sure they did. They made service pack one. After that they came out with Windows 8. What's the next version of the operating system comes out Microsoft really doesn't give a shit about the old one. They put their big effort into making the move to the new version.
As it should be. It's not a new product, it's just the update to the old one.
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Still, they built the mechanism/ability of including updates in the install media. It would take all of 1 engineer all of 1 hour to compile an updated ISO and stick it online.
Over the course of 10 years it probably would have reduced the load on their update servers by a fantastical amount.
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@guyinpv said in What is the best way to get reloaded Windows 7 up to date?:
Still, they built the mechanism/ability of including updates in the install media. It would take all of 1 engineer all of 1 hour to compile an updated ISO and stick it online.
Over the course of 10 years it probably would have reduced the load on their update servers by a fantastical amount.
Would it? Does MS publish a Win 7 ISO for the public? I don't recall ever seeing one.
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@Dashrender said in What is the best way to get reloaded Windows 7 up to date?:
@guyinpv said in What is the best way to get reloaded Windows 7 up to date?:
Still, they built the mechanism/ability of including updates in the install media. It would take all of 1 engineer all of 1 hour to compile an updated ISO and stick it online.
Over the course of 10 years it probably would have reduced the load on their update servers by a fantastical amount.
Would it? Does MS publish a Win 7 ISO for the public? I don't recall ever seeing one.
Not officially I guess. MS never published links or publicized the info themselves but for a long time it was possible to download ISOs for many products including Win 7 from Digital River as long as you knew the direct link location. There were a few websites that maintained extensive lists.
I think this is not so much the case these days.
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@NDC @Dashrender I would recommend this tool then
https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67-microsoft-windows-and-office-iso-download-toolIt works well for version 7 to 10 amd office downloads.