Depends a lot on how fast your system is. But if it is reasonably fast by today's standards, 30 - 40 minutes for Windows and updates will depend on how fast your internet connection is and how many updates need to be downloaded. Then you need to consider how much time to install all of your programs and utilities in addition and then get all of the updates for them too. When I do a clean install, I expect to put in a good 8 hours. However, I don't do it all in one continues job. I may spread that out over several days.
i have FIOS so my speed is 55/30 Mbps. Its been running for almost 3 hrs. Should i expect it to run past midnight?
55mbps is twice as fast as my connection and I don't recall spending that much time downloading updates for Windows. It helps if you start with one of the up-to-date Windows iso files such as the 20-in-1 that murphy78 puts out each month. Then there are relatively few updates needed.
would u recommend leaving it running all night? I checked out on the net and some say many hours. i talked to a geek squed guy and he said it could take 8 hrs. When it 1st came out in August it took a half hour to install.
It downloads each little text file as well as the cab files. It also seems to do a lot of stuff during the download. I could only speculate what it is actually up to, but I know from experience that it's not as simple as downloading x megabytes of updates. Depending on the speed of your system and it's hard drive, it can take up to 2 hours. On my system a full x64 updating takes about 45 mins, but then my hard disk is still one of those old rotating ones.