The same evening my updates installed on my family pc, my new canon pixma printer quick working giving an error message which said I had to send it in due to hardware failure. I reinstalled the drivers and it worked, but once I shut if off I got the same message on restart. I reinstalled again and have kept the printer on. Again, I suspect it should only be a matter of time before my entire studio is disrupted with loud pro gov't messages and the repetitive  sound of the proverbial Nelson character, hah-hah, hah-hah, hah-hah!

I have a triple boot system.  Win 10/Win 7/Win 10 Preview.  Win 10 is my production OS but I keep Win 7 as I do some PC support and still have a couple of clients on Win 7. 
 
My Win 7 shows the last time it updated was June 6, but it has had updates since then.  The slow/no updates is a frequent post on the Windows 7 forum.  I tried to get updates on my Win 7 and it went into "checking for updates" and after 2 hours I gave up as I had some work to do and went back to Win 10.  The next day I booted Win 7 and started the checking for updates and I let it go for 4 hours.  I had to stop it and boot Win 10 to check mail and some other tasks.  I went back to Win 7 and did the checking for updates again for 3 hours and after the 3 hours it was still checking for updates.  I had to go back to Win 10 and after doing what I had to do I went back to Win 7 and within 5 minutes I got a notification that Updates were available and the Update Icon was showing in the Notification Area.  I went to the Updates panel and Installed the updates (about 6 or 7) and restarted the PC (to finish installing the updates).  After Win 7 booted back up, I got a notice that updates had been installed but when I looked at the Update panel It still showed June 6 as the last time it checked for updates.....

Everything about Windows 7/8.1 updates changes from October 2016 onwards ...
 
Monthly rollups only.  Sort of like the Windows 10 method.
 
From October 2016 onwards, Windows will release a single Monthly Rollup that addresses both security issues and reliability issues in a single update. The Monthly Rollup will be published to Windows Update (WU), WSUS, SCCM, and the Microsoft Update Catalog. Each month’s rollup will supersede the previous month’s rollup, so there will always be only one update required for your Windows PCs to get current. i.e. a Monthly Rollup in October 2016 will include all updates for October, while November 2016 will include October and November updates, and so on.
 
https://blogs.technet.mic...ows-7-and-windows-8-1/

You can get a recently installed system up to SP1 by downloading an installer from Microsoft if the Windows Update site is too slow. 
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15090/windows-7-install-service-pack-1-sp1
 

Thanks for the feedback folks, Most of you are confirming what I have gathered about this issue.
Widows Update server is super slow.
Windows 7 Updates have been a mess for a while now. 
A fresh install of W7 SP1 is stuck in the mud.
 
I'm not going to spend any more time on his laptop, I'm doing this as a favour, I'll explain this to him and he can either deal with it or now pay to upgrade to W10. Hmm, looks like $150 Can for the Home version.  I think he can buy a new laptop with better specs than his for double that. I see one at the Source for $299. But his is working 100% and is running fast enough considering the hard drive and processor. Takes over a minute to boot. Not used to that anymore :)  
 
I have Windows 7 on 2 computers still. One is my old DAW that I haven't even turned on for 6 months. I don't care about the updates for that machine as it works 100% and is never going to be on line. It's just an emergency back up. It would not run W 10 I don't think, Only a 2 core 2.4Mhz. 4 Gigs RAM.  Super computer 10 years ago.
 
I also run W7 Ultimate on a laptop I use for live recording. I do use it on line sometimes and it was up to date as far as I know. It occasionally installed updates. Seems fine, it was a Vista system so I'd be pushing my luck to go higher than 7.
 
I think the issue is if you do a fresh install and the version you use is SP1.
My ultimate dvd install used to take 4 rounds over a few days to finally settle down.  
 
 

Jim Roseberry
We haven't had that kind of trouble with Win7 updates, but I can tell you that the update servers have been painfully slow (especially with the first round of updates).

 I had to leave a W7 system on a day or two for the W7 updates to show up. Also check update history see if any failed.