Having done this several times, my experience has been that Windows is going to choke on trying to do several years of Windows updates all in one fell swoop.

While it takes tending while you do it (well, you can start the process, then go watch TV for awhile), I've found it works best to go into Windows Update, check about 20 or 30 updates (uncheck the rest), and just update them. Start from the oldest to the newest (you can generally tell by the numbers associated with the update). Once they are finished (which may require interim reboots), then do 20 or 30 more. Wash, rinse, repeat until you are up to date.

I've tried the brute force (just let them all run overnight) to find the next morning that many updates failed and have gotten stuck where it won't update at all.

Your experience may be different, but I've seen this on a couple of different machines I've had to re-install Windows 7 and then update to the latest patch levels.

John

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