As you can probably see this starts taking alot of resources and a LONG time when we have thousands of potential updates. Now Windows figures out that it only needs 2 patches, Patch 2 and Patch 3. It then finds out that neither are related to patch 2. Then Windows must double check and when it does this it finds out that patch 3 is a newer version of patch 1. You would install them in that order right? Well windows will tally that it needs all 3. When Windows starts searching for updates it takes all of the available updates and THEN it needs to calculate which of the updates replaces the older ones known as 'superseded'.
Basically, The older Windows gets the more updates accumulate.
The issue comes from how Windows updates are done. Over the past several months reports have been rolling in in the tech world that users have been having issues updating Windows Vista, 7 and 8.
