[solved] ? Windows takes forever / Windows takes a long time to do a windows update

GASP! an MS Windows post! blasphemy!

...but I use Windows at work and ran into the same problem and looked online for ways to solve it but couldn't find a solution...nothing seemed to work.
However! by combining suggestions I ran into something very interesting. Any time there's a Windows update that includes one for Internet Explorer, the update takes forever!
So instead of manually installing everything willy-nilly, just manually install the one for Internet Explorer and update the rest normally.

1. You can just wait until you get that dreaded notice and try your luck...or go to TN Security Advisories and click on Security Bulletin Summaries, the current year...yeah it's 2017 but no updates yet so click on 2016 (unless it's the future!) and then MS16-DEC.
2. Look for the one that says Internet Explorer under Affected Software and click that Bulletin ID, in this case MS16-144.
3. Find your version, download the Monthly Rollup or Security Only file and manually install the update. I chose the Monthly Rollup.
4. Reboot...twice just in case...cause Windows. Then in Task Manager -> Services, make sure BITS is running. Start it up if it's not running and go take a break for a few minutes.
5. Then, if you haven't gotten the "hey there's updates available" message in the tray, try running Windows Update. It should work a lot faster and hopefully get all the necessary updates.

Every now and then (usually three or four times a month) check that BITS is running (I changed mine to automatic...but for some reason, it changes back to manual so I change it to automatic again...and again..) then open up the Windows Update window to make sure it's checking for updates. You can see if it is by looking at the date...if it hasn't changed since the last update, you may have problems during the next update...but fret not, I haven't had any issues these past few months so it does seems to work.

Hope this helped. And let me know if this worked for you!

Cheers!

I may have unintentionally left something out...if you run into a roadblock let me know.
There are plenty of sites that tell you how to manually install updates so I didn't include those instructions here. google it.