virtualbox.org

I see serious problems while attempting to update Windows guest VMs (several versions) thru Windows Update.
It take a very long time to detect and download updates, and installing updates many times fails.
Maybe it's due to other reasons I am still investigating.
Let me ask, anyway, if there is any known issue related to updating guest Windows VMs thru Windows Update.
Regards
marius

marius_1956 wrote:Maybe it's due to other reasons I am still investigating.

Yes. It's called Windows Update Servers.

Have you tried the same process in a real PC? That's exactly how the whole thing goes! It's not a VM issue, it's a WindowsUpdate issue. That's exactly why there was a need for the WSUS offline to be "invented". And it's not just for VMs...

Just because an OS/program that runs in the context of VirtualBox has a problem, it doesn't make it a VirtualBox problem necessarily. You're having an issue that has nothing to do with VirtualBox, so my suggestion would be to treat it as such, as a native problem with the OS of the guest.

I have been running Windows guests in VirtualBox on Windows hosts for more years than I care to remember. If there was a significant difference between Windows Update in guests I am sure I would have noticed (and so would a lot of other people). Windows Update has many problems, but they are no worse in vms that in physical PCs.

Windows Update is resource hungry, so if your VM is configured with limited resources, update will be slow and unreliable, just as it is on under-resourced PCs.