Re: Slow checking for updates...
Windows 7 has always been slow checking for updates.
Not on my PCs. It was always quite fast ('checking for updates' completed within five minutes) until the beginning of the Windows 10 bandwagon, and since then that initial check just got slower and slower. The rest of the update process is as per, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, depending on what was updated. But that initial check is where the problem seems to lie.