Cant get windows updates?

muffler

I have an oldish (probably about 6 years old) Dell PC that I bought second hand and it came with Windows 7 Professional installed. However when I try to download updates it just searches and searches and searches. Its been running now for over an hour and still no updates found. I also note that there were never any updates installed.......see screen grab below.

How can I sort this out?

mp22

Have a read here,pm me if you cant access the download links.(post 1)

Link added http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/45005-Simplix-Pack-to-update-Live-Win7-System-Integrate-hotfixes-into-Win7-distribution

Boom_Bap

I'd say there is something blocking access, do you happen to have 2 AV's installed?
Is accessing the web in general OK on it?

ED E

Its a recurring problem with older WU versions, just wait about 5hrs, reboot and roll again. Eventually they'll start flying in.

muffler

mp22 wrote: »

Have a read here,pm me if you cant access the download links.(post 1)

No link???

Boom_Bap wrote: »

I'd say there is something blocking access, do you happen to have 2 AV's installed?
Is accessing the web in general OK on it?

I had AVG only up to yesterday but I seem to have some sort of virus (web pages popping up) so I downloaded malwarebytes and also Ariva.

However the problem has been occurring for the last few weeks when it was only AVG installed.

kierank01

going to keep this one short, if there is anything that you don't know how to do, we can go through that afterwards.


reboot the computer
stop the windows update service
rename the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder to something else
reboot the computer
restart the windows update service
check for updates

the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder should be recreated, and you can check it's size as windows checks for updates, to see if it is progressing.

muffler

kierank01 wrote: »

going to keep this one short, if there is anything that you don't know how to do, we can go through that afterwards.


reboot the computer
stop the windows update service
rename the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder to something else
reboot the computer
restart the windows update service
check for updates

the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder should be recreated, and you can check it's size as windows checks for updates, to see if it is progressing.

I found the folder but couldnt change the name as its being used in another programme...or something like that. I'll reboot now and check it after tea and hopefully it will change then. Thanks

kierank01

muffler wrote: »

I found the folder but couldnt change the name as its being used in another programme...or something like that. I'll reboot now and check it after tea and hopefully it will change then. Thanks

did you stop the service?
You may have to reboot the computer after stopping the service rather than before... its been a couple of months since I had to do this, and I'm going off memory.

ItHurtsWhenIP

I reinstalled a Win7 Pro machine recently (this was before M$FT provided that sweet sweet roll up package).

I think the WU took about 3-4 hours before anything showed up after scanning.

Fysh

From this post in the Windows forum:

Try installing the following updates manually first, then reboot and run Windows Update again.

KB3083710: x86 (32-bit) x64 (64-bit)

KB3102810: x86 (32-bit) x64 (64-bit)

KB947821: x86 (32-bit) x64 (64-bit)

muffler

Sorry for the delay in posting back. I tried the 3 downloads posted above by Fysh as that looked the simplest way for a non techie and while the last one took a bit of time to install they do appear to have worked but cant say for sure yet.

Just after the last one installed I was going to do a reboot and decided to have a look at the download status and low and behold there's 200+ updates available. So instead of rebooting I just went straight to download and install and thats what is currently happening now although its still showing 0% downloaded after nearly 10 minutes so I may have to reboot.

Screen grab below showing the available downloads from earlier

muffler

Guys just to say a big thanks for all the help and advice. This issue seems to have settled down now. Maybe it was the sheer volume of updates that was partly responsible as it took an eternity to download and install them. But the links posted by Fysh certainly got the ball rolling for me.

As you will see from the screen grab posted above there were 237 updates (important) to get through. I think that started at around 7 in the evening and at 2:30 the next morning I exited the whole thing. I was probably wrong in doing this but Im not content going to bed and leaving the PC running. In any event it appeared to be stuck for over an hour and a half on one particular download/installation so it was best to quit at that stage.

When I checked the following day I had something like 85 "fails" but later it downloaded and installed most of these but still with a couple/few fails here and there. Its going a hell of a lot faster now and the available updates were getting lesser by the day. So Im pretty much up to speed now.

Thanks again for the help

jca

muffler wrote: »

Guys just to say a big thanks for all the help and advice. This issue seems to have settled down now. Maybe it was the sheer volume of updates that was partly responsible as it took an eternity to download and install them. But the links posted by Fysh certainly got the ball rolling for me.

As you will see from the screen grab posted above there were 237 updates (important) to get through. I think that started at around 7 in the evening and at 2:30 the next morning I exited the whole thing. I was probably wrong in doing this but Im not content going to bed and leaving the PC running. In any event it appeared to be stuck for over an hour and a half on one particular download/installation so it was best to quit at that stage.

When I checked the following day I had something like 85 "fails" but later it downloaded and installed most of these but still with a couple/few fails here and there. Its going a hell of a lot faster now and the available updates were getting lesser by the day. So Im pretty much up to speed now.

Thanks again for the help

I find leaving it turned on for about an hour and then doing a restart seems to help a lot.

ItHurtsWhenIP

muffler wrote: »

Guys just to say a big thanks for all the help and advice. This issue seems to have settled down now. Maybe it was the sheer volume of updates that was partly responsible as it took an eternity to download and install them. But the links posted by Fysh certainly got the ball rolling for me.

As you will see from the screen grab posted above there were 237 updates (important) to get through. I think that started at around 7 in the evening and at 2:30 the next morning I exited the whole thing. I was probably wrong in doing this but Im not content going to bed and leaving the PC running. In any event it appeared to be stuck for over an hour and a half on one particular download/installation so it was best to quit at that stage.

When I checked the following day I had something like 85 "fails" but later it downloaded and installed most of these but still with a couple/few fails here and there. Its going a hell of a lot faster now and the available updates were getting lesser by the day. So Im pretty much up to speed now.

Thanks again for the help

I had to rebuild a Win8.1 laptop recently, only it's recovery partition was Win8.

After getting Win8 back on, I kicked off the Win8.1 install at 8:00pm ... it finished at about 10:00am the following morning. Then came the patches to come up-to-date, which took until sometime that evening to complete (lots of intervening reboots). I usually reserve the overnight window to be doing the loooooonnnnngggg updates.

I've found in these situations you regularly get failed updates, but they eventually get through. You just gotta keep plugging away at them.