24H2 updates are not faster as MS promised?

I remember Microsoft promising that installing 24H2 will lead to faster cumulative updating so I updated my two devices to 24H2 on 15th December 2024. Since then there have been three Patch Tuesday updates and am not seeing faster updates. Last night one device took 45 minutes and the other device took 55 minutes. I know that some of that time my devices were in a queue waiting for the download to begin but the same applied when I updated prior to 24H2. In the end 24H2 is not faster to install updates.
Is it my imagination or do others find the same?

wiganken said:

Is it my imagination or do others find the same?

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This Patch Tuesday was pretty fast for me. On both Win 10 and Win 11.
They finished in about 6-7 minutes each, including restart, etc.

But... I usually do the end of the month Preview Updates, too.
I don't know if that helps or not?

I didn't time them but both Feb and March cumulative seemed PDQ for me.

For me, yesterday's KB5053602 took about 8 minutes.

wiganken said:

Is it my imagination or do others find the same?

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For me the cumulative update was really quite quick. The desktop took about 7-8 minutes, but the laptop (ARM based windows) was really quick at about 4-5 minutes. Although there was no .net update on the laptop. I assume this is because most of the quality changes will be rolled out gradually later.

It seems to be just my devices then?
I wonder if it is my ISP's servers unable to cope with Patch Tuesday demand?
After clicking on 'Check for updates' and it finding the updates the downloading does not begin immediately. It stays at 0% for maybe 5 minutes before starting downloading and then it is slow to download the updates. It probably takes 15 minutes to get from 0% to 100% downloaded and it stays at 100% for another minute before 'Installing' begins. My broadband download speed is around 60 Mbps.
The installing part (not ISP related) takes another 20 minutes before the 'Restart now' prompt shows. The black-screen installing updates part takes another 5 minutes before the sign-in screen shows.

I have run the tuneup.bat file but it found no integrity violations or component store corruption and chkdsk found no problems.
I have Bitdefender Total Security installed but I can't see this interfering with Windows updates.

Any ideas on what might be affecting windows update on my two devices?

I think the 'install part' probably also includes communication between your device and the remote server. I'd say your download speed is the main culprit. I have 900Mb/s download speed - so 15x faster.

These updates only take a long time if you sit and watch them. Yesterday's update was released early for some reason, so the first notification I had of this was when I got a pop-up on my laptop saying it was ready to reboot. All the processing getting ready for the reboot takes place in the background so usually I leave WU to do that and get on with something else.

Senecio said:

I think the 'install part' probably also includes communication between your device and the remote server.

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I thought the 'Install' part was all done locally on the disk (there is plenty of disk space available) with no further comms happening after the download was complete? Can any one clarify this please?

RFS said:

These updates only take a long time if you sit and watch them

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That is subjective. I am being objective by comparing time taken to complete updates on my devices with those mentioned in other posts. 45 to 55 minutes compared to 8 minutes is a massive difference. Ceasing to watch the update process does not speed it up. It just ignores the issue.

I am hoping that someone may offer a fix.

wiganken said:

I am hoping that someone may offer a fix.

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Have you considered doing a clean install of 24H2 after deleting ALL partitions on the boot drive? This will get rid of any 'crud' on your device(s).

Mine took a fair while to complete download but installation was done in under 10 minutes. I'm on a 50MB internet fed.

There is nothing to fix. You have modest consumer spec PC and Laptop.

That could be better with 16 GB of RAM in both of them and also upgrade the SSD to 1 TB.
That would help a bit, not a lot though, being realistic.

"I am being objective by comparing time taken to complete updates on my devices with those mentioned in other posts. 45 to 55 minutes compared to 8 minutes is a massive difference."

No point in comparing consumer Laptops/PCs, modest Internet speeds, with professional people buying new £10,000 PC hardware every year with Internet speeds of 10,000 Mbps.

I never bother monitoring most update events. I don't care how long a Cumulative update download lasts, 10 sec, 1 min or 1 week who cares.
There is the March cumulative update going on whilst writing this. I will do any Restart required at my leisure, after the notification orange dot and arrows.

These supposedly accurate statements of taking 5-10 min without any mention of what is considered start and end points, hardware etc.
The number may as well be just made up, it is certainly not any kind of measurement.

e.g. The endpoint is not the Sign-in screen after the Restart.
Particularly during .NET Framework and Cumulative updates the installation of updates continues on for quite a while after the Restart and Sign-in. There are settings for some things in Windows updates > Advanced options.

As a yardstick I am quoting the time taken from 'Check for updates' until the sign-in screen appears. What happens after that doesn't matter because I am able use the device after signing in and that is all I care about.

I accept that my moderately specced devices will not be as fast as powerful devices in carrying out tasks.

What I should have made clear is that 24H2 is no faster than 23H2 was at downloading and installing updates and that seems at odds with what Microsoft promised. The fact that I have moderately specced devices is irrelevant in this respect. I should still have seen faster completion times compared with 23H2.

The 24H2 upgrade has little, if any, connection with download speeds and, as the cumulative updates actually grow in size every month, it would be naive to expect the download/setup part of the process to get faster if user connectivity with the update servers remains the same.

Example:

February 2025 - Windows11.0-kb5051987-x64.msu - 634,459 KB
March 2025 - Windows11.0-kb5053598-x64.msu - 691,813 KB

Interesting to be able to see the download sizes but where do you find that information please?

IanMosley said:

Have you considered doing a clean install of 24H2

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No. I am not prepared to go those lengths to try and fix this issue. It is only once per month so not worth the trouble.

I looked at the the Windows update troubleshooter but it doesn't have an option to choose 'Updates are slow to install....' (see photo) so the troubleshooter is no use to me either.

I'll just have to accept it and carry on.

Gadzooks! Just updated 2 test machines to Build 27813 (Canary) and it took over an HOUR to run from start to finish on both machines. Slow, and unsual, in my recent experience. Wonder what's inside? Announcement says "Very little."
Odd...
--Ed--

MS, busy counting the trillions $$$$$$$