To turn it off: Go to Services>Indexing Services>Properties>Startup Type and select "Disable">Apply>OK To rebuild: Go to Control Panel>Indexing Options>Advanced>Troubleshoot and click on "Rebuild". If you decide to rebuild, Berk...it will warn you that this exercise takes a while. They're no underestimating. It does take a while and can take upwards to 2 hours plus so be prepared to do something else while the system is rebuilding the index. Hope this helps.

We have the same Windows version plus Office 2010, dadoes. I have a custom built system and rarely, if ever, have any update issues...BUT...I did this time. I always defrag before I load updates and I did so this time. However...it took two warm boots before the updates configuration completed. It didn't require any interference on my part...no manual powering off...and I think the whole process was complete within a half hour or so. I've never witnessed this type of loading in all the years I've been getting updates. The updates were all successful and are...to my knowledge...completely operative. Whether MS's update selection process..as in a few updates divided out from the 221... made this action necessary, I'll never know but it sure was interesting to watch.

Windows 7 is getting kind of old - I'm getting old too so I forget a lot of windows 7 things unless I'm actually looking at it. You can download a windows 7 update trouble shooter from Microsoft. I might try downloading IE11 offline installer and install it after visiting control panels 'internet options' and on the last tab Resetting IE.

DSL over a copper phone line is distance dependent. Distance isn't a factor for cable internet or fiber (whether from the phone company or the cable company). rita, your bandwidth is very limited. If a Windows update was in progress, there was no added capacity in the connection to do a speed test, it was all being used by the update and that probably explains what you saw. Capacity (sometimes called speed, wrongly) is expressed in Megabits per second (megs, or Mb/sec). File sizes are expressed in bytes, There are 8 bits to the byte. A Windows update can be 200-300 megaBYTES, so 1600-2400 megaBITS. Average it to 2000,. At a connection capacity of 2 megs (Mbit/sec) that would take, say, 1000 seconds. 15+ minutes. At 1 Mb, 30+ minutes. With no ability to do anything else at the same time, because trying to share an already burdened connection will cause all uses to choke. I think that's what happened with your update. If you want or need to do a Windows update, take the laptops to a public place (like a library) that may have a faster connection than you have at home. Edited to correct math