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Case of the stalled Windows 7 Updates with MDT Build & Capture
By William Bracken
Published September 30, 2016
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Today I would like to talk about a frustrating issue for those of us who still have a need to create a build & capture process for Windows 7.  This post is focused around using a Build and Capture Task Sequence with MDT 2013 Update 2 without a WSUS server (letting Windows 7 go to Microsoft Update for patches).

The Issue

As you likely know by now that Windows 7 SP1 has over 200 updates to install on a fresh build.  This is a massive number of updates as I am sure you will agree.  I have created numerous build and captures of Windows 7 over the years but it has been quite some time since I have had to do so.  What I found was with using only the Windows 7 SP1 install bits, the MDT task “Windows Update” (ZTIWindowsUpdate.swf) took somewhere between 3-4 hours to start installing updates, then stalled out after the first 2 rounds of updates (rebooting in between of course).  I let is sit just to see if it would recover.  In my case it didn’t after letting it sit for about 16 hours.

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Now you also likely know that Microsoft released the Windows 7 SP1 Convenience Rollup fairly recently so I decided to use DISM to inject the April 2015 servicing stack update which is a prerequisite for the convenience rollup, followed by the convenience rollup itself into the install.wim in my Deployment Share.  If anything, this made the matter worse.  It now stalled on the first pass of the Windows Update task, again after letting it sit overnight.  🙁

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I tried numerous things after searching the web far and wide.  Things like applying KB3102810 as a “package” in MDT as others have suggested.  This update did make the updates process start much faster (usually in the 7-10 minute range) however it continued to stall after reboots and picking up where it left off.

 

The Resolution

Using the default install.wim with no injected updates or packages that get injected offline, I created 3 Applications in my MDT Deployment Workbench.

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First Application: April 2015 Hotfix with the following command line:

wusa.exe AMD64-all-windows6.1-kb3020369-x64_5393066469758e619f21731fc31ff2d109595445.msu /quiet /norestart

Second Application: Convenience rollup with the following command line:

wusa.exe AMD64-all-windows6.1-kb3125574-v4-x64_2dafb1d203c8964239af3048b5dd4b1264cd93b9.msu /quiet /norestart

Third application: July 2016 Rollup with the following command line:

wusa.exe Windows6.1-KB3172605-x64.msu /quiet /norestart

I placed them in my Task Sequence in the State Restore phase, prior to the first Windows Updates task:

mdt-win7ts2

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This results in a build and capture process for Windows 7 SP1 that takes somewhere between 2-3 hour start to finish!

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You can download the .msu files references in this post here:

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April 2015 Servicing Stack Update:

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=3020369

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Windows 7 SP1 Convenience Rollup:

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=3125574

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Windows 7 SP1 July 2016 Rollup:

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=3172605

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Hopefully this saves someone else some frustration!  Until next time..

Post Tags: Build and Capture | MDT 2013 | Windows 7
Article By William Bracken
Partner – Model Technology Solutions William is an experienced and results-driven IT geek who is passionate about the “automation of things,” with an extensive background in systems management, advanced OS deployment automation, and overall infrastructure automation. He has more than 19 years of experience in IT, and has designed and implemented management solutions that have dramatically reduced support costs and ultimately brought consistent and well managed operating environments to organizations across the US.

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