Yeah this is pretty well documented around the internet, Windows 7 per Microsoft intentionally does not receive Windows updates anymore through the Windows Update mechanism; however, you can still get updates on software and drivers. There was a bug introduced at some point which causes WU to take hours to days to search. I haven't looked at the reddit post but this bug and fix are well documented on various sites. My opinion is Microsoft is making it harder to update on Windows 7 in an attempt to get people to move to Windows 10.