Four steps to reduce the pain of Windows 7 installations using cumulative updates
Excellent article by Ed Bott about reinstalling a fresh Windows 7 machine. A few simple steps and you can cut down the amount of time necessary to install Windows 7. As an technical person the time and effort to reinstall any operating system can be long and boring. Various times in the day you need to stop to review what point you are up to and go back to the other tasks at hand.
Windows 7 celebrates its eighth birthday in 2017. Based on Microsoft there will be a 10-year support plan so the phase out will happen sometime in 2020. There has been numerous updates over the past 8 years so it does take a lot of time to download and install the pieces. As everyone knows there are so many security updates with Windows 7 and the operating system is still very populate with folks. Baron Software still recommends to move over to Windows 10 but if your machine is running fine then wait until a new machine is necessary. On the corporate side it is much more difficult due to the facts that there could be many machines within a company that have to be upgraded.
Bott also provides a link for the users that use an offline image for distribution using different deployment tools.
The biggest thing as time progresses is whether to use the 32 or 64 bit versions. You have to keep that in mind. The time it has taken for everyone to move from 32 bit has been long but we do believe within the next 5 years the 32 bit will go along with the 16 bit.
These simple steps are described in the article by Bott in detail
Step 1: Download the updates you need, before you need them
Step 2: Install Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 without connecting to a network
Step 3: Install the standalone update packages offline
Step 4: Connect to the internet and check for updates