Yes, clean install usually helps, but it wasn't my laptop so I didn't want to jump to extreme solutions straight away (otherwise I might have put Ubuntu on it!)
I think what the main problem was they hadn't used it in a while and accumulated a backlog of mandatory Windows Updates. While these chugged away they got frustrated with an almost unresponsive computer, turned it off, install interrupted for the same thing to happen all over again. I can see how doing this stuff in the background makes sense as you don't necessarily want to bother the user with it, but when it impacts performance so badly maybe it's better to throw up the message and the progress bar. At least they know what's up!
feintruled|3 years ago
I think what the main problem was they hadn't used it in a while and accumulated a backlog of mandatory Windows Updates. While these chugged away they got frustrated with an almost unresponsive computer, turned it off, install interrupted for the same thing to happen all over again. I can see how doing this stuff in the background makes sense as you don't necessarily want to bother the user with it, but when it impacts performance so badly maybe it's better to throw up the message and the progress bar. At least they know what's up!