How to speed up Windows 7 Update scans—forever

Microsoft has changed the way it deploys patches, adding a new twist to an old problem. For many folks, Windows 7 Update scans still take hours—even days. How do you knock your Win7 machine upside the head, so it will find new patches in less than glacial time? We have a new Microsoft-sanctioned approach that only needs to be tempered a little.
Note that, in the new patching paradigm, even those who manually download monthly security patches (“Group B”) still need to use Windo