Windows Update won’t update (Win7)

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I run Win7 on a Boot Camp partition on a 2009 MacBook Pro. For a couple of weeks, Windows Update has refused to work. Last night, for example, I launched WU and watched the progress meter move v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y for about an hour. It never produced a list of pending updates. I ran the Update Troubleshooter, but no joy. As far as I could tell, the troubleshooter did nothing at all. My update history shows several items that failed to install, including an update to the Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Suggestions, anyone?

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Well if you have a failed update then something is getting down the line – did you get an error code ?

Go to Windows Update/View update history right click on the failed update then click on View details.

This is what it once gave for one of mine –

Security Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB3145739)

Installation date: ‎17/‎04/‎2016 17:46

Installation status: Failed

Error details: Code 800F0902

Update type: Important

The norm these days for getting the Check for updates to produce anything in Win 7 is to just leave it running and wait for them to be offered in their own time.

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Well if you have a failed update then something is getting down the line – did you get an error code ?

Go to Windows Update/View update history right click on the failed update then click on View details.

This is what it once gave for one of mine –

Security Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB3145739)

Installation date: ‎17/‎04/‎2016 17:46

Installation status: Failed

Error details: Code 800F0902

Update type: Important

The norm these days for getting the Check for updates to produce anything in Win 7 is to just leave it running and wait for them to be offered in their own time.

KB3145739 was the solution to use between April 12 and May 9. The KB3147539 update for Win7 was NOT doing the job anymore once May 10 (patch tuesday for May) and so the Windows Update long search/scan problem came back on May patch Tuesday 5/10/2016.

It’s because of using outdated WIN32K.SYS files on Win7 that seemed to cause very long Windows Update scans.
The solution is to keep installing the newest Win7 SP1 WIN32K.SYS security updates – this time it’s KB3153199.
Install KB3153199 on top of KB3145739 as KB3153199 does NOT supersede/replace KB3145739.

KB3153199 seemed to reduce the Windows Update scan times on my Win7 machines – for now until June 14 (the patch Tuesday for June) in which there may be another new WIN32K.SYS update being released if the long Windows Update scan problem comes back.

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The solution is to keep installing the newest Win7 SP1 WIN32K.SYS security updates – this time it’s KB3153199.
Install KB3153199 on top of KB3145739 as KB3153199 does NOT supersede/replace KB3145739.

Had high hopes for this, as I’ve tried nearly everything else with no joy. But it still stalls out with the maddening, vague “Searching for updates on this computer” forever dialog. I have disabled the wifi to keep it from hitting the internet, but it searches endlessly and can’t be interrupted- it just keeps running, regardless of how many times I hit ‘cancel’….

This machine is a laptop on which a friend had allowed the MS Windows 10 upgrade. He didn’t like it and tried to go back to 7. The reversal failed and left him with an unbootable machine. I restored it via the recovery partition, which was – unfortunately – pre-SP 1.

It’s been an update nightmare since then. It took nearly 3 days to get SP-1 installed, using various workarounds, the not-all-that-helpful standalone installer and many reboots that occasionally would show a waiting update after hours of seemingly-fruitless searching. It’s still missing 147 updates, and hasn’t found a single one in days, no matter what I try.

I’ve wasted countless hours reading forum and blog posts, referring to MS technical documents, etc. My friend is grateful for all the free tech support, but I’m close to telling him that I can’t do this anymore. He should just go to 10 and learn to live with it, but he and his wife are very unsophisticated computer users who can’t cope with change. (imagine the result, had they gone from 7 to 8.0 — they’d be on suicide watch…)

I’ve never been a harsh Microsoft critic, but they have really screwed the pooch with this abysmal situation and the heavy-handed tactics to trick users into going with Windows 10. I like 10, but there are some very valid reasons for some users to stay with 7, or even 8.1.

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Maybe that’s the problem. I use the Mac side far more often, so Windows isn’t “alive” all the time. Maybe if I were to leave Windows up more often it’d get those updates.

Thanks!

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For the last two months when I’ve looked to see if any updates had been offered on my other Win 7 laptop, I’ve been prompted to do a manual check for updates even though the setting is Check for but let me choose..

I’ve ended up leaving it running overnight and they’ve been there in the morning.

Perhaps when you are done with the Mac side of things, you should try the same with Windows booted.

Even though this laptop is set the same, I’ve never had any such problems.

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I find it helpful occasionally to use the MS Baseline Security Analyzer to check for security issues, and in particular any missing security updates, should I be doubtful of anything.

When the program is run, it will check the system and report (eventually) that either no security updates are missing, or that one or more updates, security packs or update rollups are missing. It will report on what is scanned, the result details, and how to correct this. The result details section identifies the missing item(s), the item ID, description and KB number, with clickable links to download.

It may or may not always be useful. I have one update I chose not to install, dealing with daylight saving times, but then I don’t live in Azerbaijan, Chile, Haiti, or Morocco!

As a bonus, MBSA also checks administrative vulnerabilities and suggests way of correcting them.

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It just seems strange that updating W7 is suddenly a big problem when MS are pushing W10… Never had any problems up until now.
If it is MS making things hard for W7 users, then it’s pathetic. When this computer goes, I’ff off to Linuxland…

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Perhaps things will improve when the free Win 10 deadline expires.

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“Checking for updates” seems to take longer on or soon after Patch Tuesday, when probably millions of PCs are all trying to do the same thing at the same time. It possibly also depends on how many updates are available for the particular PC. I ran a “check for updates” just now on my Win7 system, and it came back with “no updates available” in 20 seconds.

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Maybe I simply need to leave it running Windows overnight. I’ll try that. Thanks, everyone!

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Maybe I simply need to leave it running Windows overnight. I’ll try that. Thanks, everyone!

I’m now having the same problem with a Win 7 laptop that I’ve recently factory reset and while it has initially given me about 20 updates, check for updates hasn’t produced anymore – even after running it overnight and longer.

It doesn’t help that the Windows Update service is maxing out the CPU and increasing the memory usage even without running the check for updates.

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Our Win7 laptop took two days of checking for updates; finally got the updates; installed with no problem with one failure; rebooted the machine tried again and the one failed update installed itself.

I have to say the “goings on” with Win7 updates is just abominable.

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I’ve just refurbished a Win7 laptop (the background: a friend was given it with a dodgy Win8 over the top of it, and they asked me to fix it). No disks, no hidden partition, nothing.

So I just reinstalled with a Win7 SP1 disk I had, activated it, and installed the recent update rollup.

So far, so good. The next step was to see if there were any more recent updates, and I immediately came across the Windows7-searches-for-updates-forever-and-never-finds-any problem. It was getting late, so I decided to give up and try again the next day. On shutting it down, I got the Windows-is-installing-updates message.

So the upshot is, it may be that Windows has found the updates, but isn’t telling you. It may be worth just shutting down or restarting.

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Following a factory reset of my other Win 7 laptop, I installed Silverlight first and had no problems installing SP1 as that machine is also pre-SP1.

I was also able to install IE 11 which included a number of its accompanying updates, but I had the same problem trying to get it to find any more than the paltry 12 others that I auto got.

You can stop the Check for updates via Task Manager/Applications – click on it then on End Task.

Did you have the Check for updates running when you tried to download KB3153199 ?

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Following a factory reset of my other Win 7 laptop, I installed Silverlight first and had no problems installing SP1 as that machine is also pre-SP1.

I saw your earlier comment about installing Silverlight, but it was only after several failed attempts, followed by the eventual success, of installing SP1 on this machine that I stumbled across your message. So that’s ‘dam water’, as they say. Silverlight is present, but I’ve been through so many things that it’s hard to say when it was added…

I was also able to install IE 11 which included a number of its accompanying updates, but I had the same problem trying to get it to find any more than the paltry 12 others that I auto got.

Same here. I made sure to get IE11 as soon as I could, after seeing that IE8 was the provided browser in the factory image. I generally run away, screaming, from any version of IE, but I think my buddy and his wife use it as their default browser. (shudder) Oh, well — It’s their machine…

You can stop the Check for updates via Task Manager/Applications – click on it then on End Task.

Yeah, I’ve done that several times, just to kill the process. But I thought a key part of this was to have it ‘fail’ on its own and give up, paving the way to just installing the darned update! Making the standalone installer depend upon this kinda defeats the idea of a ‘standalone’ installer. But I guess it’s necessary to check installed and missing updates before just blindly installing an update that may conflict or depend upon others.

Did you have the Check for updates running when you tried to download KB3153199 ?

Nope. Downloaded the update, killed the internet connection, and then ran the standalone installer. Feel like I’m providing anecdotal evidence to confirm Einstein’s definition of Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Thanks for trying to help.

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Quick Update:

Another day, another attempt. I’ve terminated the process, which somehow survived an overnight system shutdown and continued to run after a reboot.

After terminating the process, I restarted the system again and called up the standalone installer for KB3153199. (while disconnected from the internet) This time, the search for updates failed quickly, and the installer says that it is now installing KB3153199.

Will report on success or failure upon completion…

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It looks like you have finally ground it down and it has surrendered 😀

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It looks like you have finally ground it down and it has surrendered 😀

Hope so. It’s been searching for nearly a half hour, but I’m not expecting miracles — just a improvement over several days without finding anything…

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I assume you’ve run the various WU troubleshooters such as –

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/gp/windows-update-issues/en-us

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/971058

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I assume you’ve run the various WU troubleshooters …[/quote]

Very likely. Although I can’t identify these, specifically, I did run a lot of troubleshooters & fixits, as well as other suggestions in this and other Windows forums.

After getting KB3153199 to install yesterday, it appeared that it didn’t do any good — it thrashed looking for updates all day and into the night. A couple of times before going to bed, I stopped the scan and restarted after seeing the exclamation point next to Shut Down in the Start menu. But when I shut down/restarted there was no hint that it was doing updates. Another time, WU told me that there was a new version of MS Update ready to install. I okayed that, but it appeared that nothing was installed.

I tried it again this morning, and again saw the exclamation point in front of Shut Down. Shut it down, and — lo and behold! — it’s now in the middle of a slow install of 237 updates. Maybe this will be the end of my grief!

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Wonder if MS has relented with both you and RoyW ganging up on them 😀

See last page – http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//176093-Windows-Update-Problem-On-HP-ProBook-4540s

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Wonder if MS has relented with both you and RoyW ganging up on them 😀

See last page – http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//176093-Windows-Update-Problem-On-HP-ProBook-4540s

🙂 I’ve been following that one closely, myself, as it’s quite similar to the situation I’ve encountered.

Mine’s still plugging away, now working on update #211 of 238. It’ll be interesting to tally the successful installs versus the failures. Hope the fails are few…

Thanks for your cheerleading, Sudo! 😀

P.S. Talk about asking for trouble — today, I alsoI created an image of one of my Windows 8.1 systems and went for the Windows 10 update on a trial basis. I’d like to do this on all of my Win 7 & 8 machines, just to get them ‘qualified’ for a final free upgrade in case I hold off on permanently switching them to 10. I know there will be some compatability issues with hardware, software & drivers on one or two of them, and want to start working on solving those before making the final decision.

(I do like Windows 10 — been in the Windows Insider/Tech Preview program for nearly 2 years. But some of my existing hardware and software choices can be stumbling block to moving to 10. For example, I have a 10-channel audio card that will record 8 channels simultaneously. But there are no drivers for 8.1 or 10, so I gotta keep 7 on the machine that’s in. I can’t buy an equivalent updated audio interface for anywhere near a reasonable price, so I’m not throwing this away just to run Windows 10 on that machine…)

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I’ve got the whole stack of WUs to look forward to myself when I get my other Win 7 laptop back from repair – if it’s fixed as they say, but the repair involved a factory reset, which I’d just done and built back up minus the updates, before taking it in.

Just as well I’m on unlimited download as the machine is pre-SP1.

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I’ve got the whole stack of WUs to look forward to myself when I get my other Win 7 laptop back from repair – if it’s fixed as they say, but the repair involved a factory reset, which I’d just done and built back up minus the updates, before taking it in.

Just as well I’m on unlimited download as the machine is pre-SP1.

The good news is, you’re going into it well-armed with a good idea how to approach this situation. This totally blindsided me!

Best of luck!

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I may just go into it armed with a hammer if the Check for updates hangs as much as it had been doing :D:

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Abject failure! After hours of installing the 238 updates, it finally finished the last one in late evening. It was finished and time to restart!

During the reboot, the startup screen displayed the following: “Configuring Windows updates – do not turn off or unplug your computer.” So I waited, patiently. For an hour or so. Then it restarted again, displaying the following: ‘Failure configuring Windows updates. Reverting to previous configuration. Do not turn off or unplug your computer.’

I checked the update history and saw that well over 100 of the updates failed. Didn’t bother to count them all, and I’m not going to search for 100+ error coded for diagnosis.

I may retry Fred Langa’s ‘How to completely reset Windows Updates’ from a recent Windows Secrets newsletter. This is driving me insane.

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Just check a sample as some may not be applicable in which case it will give an error 80070103, but see which ones are offered again.

I must admit that after taking that length of time that it must be galling for that many to fail.

Sometimes when you have that many to install, it’s advised to just do a few at a time.

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Just check a sample as some may not be applicable in which case it will give an error 80070103, but see which ones are offered again.

This has set me back to ‘Scan forever and find nothing’ mode…

I must admit that after taking that length of time that it must be galling for that many to fail.

You got that right…

Sometimes when you have that many to install, it’s advised to just do a few at a time.

I wasn’t given that opportunity. The standalone installer of the comprehensive patches doesn’t present the typical update selection choices. I’m assuming that it was one of these that started the ball rolling. (Downhill…)

I’m considering doing the factory restore again, to take it to the pre-Service Pack 1 state, then installing SP-1 and using the standalone installer to install the ‘Convenience Rollup’ that was released last month. I’d really like to persuade my non-paying ‘customer’ to bite the bullet and just stick with 10. I’m getting tired of the time and aggravation.

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Next time, try installing the updates in batches of 20 or so at a time. Some of the updates can conflict with each other.

Jerry

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Next time, try installing the updates in batches of 20 or so at a time. Some of the updates can conflict with each other.

Thanks for the suggestion, but this wasn’t a typical WU update experience where you’re presented with a list of Critical/Important & Optional updates and given the option to install those of your choosing. After becoming ‘unstuck’ searching, it basically said — ‘Installing 238 updates, go away for a few hours and come back prepared to be disappointed…’

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But wouldn’t that pack include the Telemetry and Win 10 associated ones where your non-paying customer could inadvertently end up with Win 10 anyway if MS continues its aggressive push ?

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But wouldn’t that pack include the Telemetry and Win 10 associated ones where your non-paying customer could inadvertently end up with Win 10 anyway if MS continues its aggressive push ?

I don’t think that’s a concern, really. I would probably employ Never10 to minimize that risk.

I’ll be seeing him tonight and giving him the story on what happened yesterday. Maybe he’ll just say ‘Put Windows 10 back on the thing. I’ll learn to use it.’

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And put all of your pain behind you 🙂

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And put all of your pain behind you 🙂

In a very real sense, my pain IS behind me — this has been a pain in the arse…

However, there has been a new development. I did meet with my buddy last night, and we agreed that the best course is to reinstall Windows 10 and be done with it.

I was so disgusted with the situation that I just let it sit for most of the rest of the day, but noticed before going to bed that it had found 212 updates on its own. Presumably, many or most of these were probably among the 238 that were fabulously unsuccessful during yesterday’s exciting session. But I let the process continue, anyway, and there were only about 20 to go when I went to bed.

When I awoke (very early) this morning, I noticed that the machine was shut down, so I booted it to see what had happened, and was pleasantly surprised to see that there were no error messages. So I ran Belarc Advisor to check for missing security updates, and it reported only 6 — that’s a big improvement over the 174 that were reported missing last time! And that enabled me to download each of the 6 individually from MS and install one-at-a-time. That proved successful, and a subsequent Microsoft Update scan indicated 9 more, which it downloaded and installed.

At this point, I think I’m finally approaching the end. Windows Update seems to be scanning and finding updates in a reasonable length of time. When there are no more updates to be found, I’m going to make a drive image and also a set of backup DVDs so we never have to walk this way again!

And I still may load the Windows 10 upgrade on his machine, but it will be done this time with a more robust backup plan in case he absolutely can’t adapt.

Cheers,
Chuck

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Perhaps MS give the Win 10 servers the weekend off so that the rest of us can get our updates 🙂 – but sounds like a result at long last.

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Saddest part of all this is, there’s no simple ‘recipe’ that I can share with others who run into this. It’s all hit-and-miss. I can’t point to one single article, troubleshooting step or Microsoft ‘Fixit’ that cleared the decks.

Not that it’s all up-to-date, I have created a repair disk, am working on a set of ‘Factory Rest’ DVDs and will create an image backup to an external drive. I’m NEVER going through this again!!!

Thanks for all your support and suggestions, Sudo.

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Glad to see that you’re almost there.

My turn now – just got a Win 7 laptop back from repair which has been factory reset.

I think I’ll just change the power plan to never turn off and leave it to its own devices and wait to see if they come on their own.

I’ve had enough of the eternal Checking for updates.

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Yep — I’m all up-to-date on the security fixes, backed-up, imaged and defragged. Will give it back to my friend this afternoon!

In your situation, I have a couple of suggestions that may help. If your factory reset takes you pre-Service Pack 1, I would recommend using the Microsoft Catalog to download the standalone installer for that, as well as any prerequisites that may be noted. In fact, I’d try to to standalone installs for as many of the cumulative updates, like the April rollup package, as possible. The big icebreaker in my (horrible!) experience seemed to be KB3153199. Once I got that installed – again, using the standalone installer with the internet disconnected – it seems like things started to slowly coalesce. (despite the massive failure of the 238 patches yesterday. At least it found and downloaded the failed ones again without holding me up for days.)

I’d also check Woody Leonard’s InfoWorld columns as well as Fred Langa’s in the Windows Secrets newsletters, assuming you get them. There have been some helpful articles since mid-May, although some of the earlier information has now been superseded by subsequent patches & updates. My way of thinking would be to avoid using auto updates for most of the stuff that came out since SP-1, and relay on the manual installation of the ‘rollup’ patch, if possible.

I agree that changing the power plan is a good idea – I did that, too. Also, occasionally check the Shutdown icon to see if it has the exclamation point, indicating that updates will be installed upon shutdown. That gives you some comfort in knowing that it’s finding something!

Good luck!!!

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I did have the alert in the Shutdown earlier but when I went to Windows Update I was just met with a red cross and a prompt to check for updates.

This was after I’d changed the settings to Check for etc. but I wasn’t going down that route again.

Prior to taking it in this last time, I’d factory reset it with a bought OEM recovery disk and built it back up from there, but had the same problem.

They had factory reset it also and when I checked it out at the store, it seemed to be working much better.

I decided to create a full system image onto DVDs as is and these will be my new factory reset disks.

When they were done, I went into Windows Updates and found 23 Important and 14 Optional waiting.

While SP1 was included in those, some were for some of the bloat, so I’m going to clean it up tomorrow and then check the updates again as from experience, they will have changed.

I should have had a lot more than 37 but hopefully, more will follow after SP1 is installed.

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I decided to create a full system image onto DVDs as is and these will be my new factory reset disks.

I did something similar. At every boot after my factory restoration, there was a dialog box prompt warning to make recovery disks. I ignored that advice until getting the system fully patched and updated. I’m not 100% certain as to what this is, though. Since there’s a recovery partition on the hard drive containing the actual factory install, including the programs that come with it, does it simply transfer that information to the DVD set for use as an installation medium? Or does it create an installable version of the updated, patched system? (which is what I was hoping for…) One thing I know for certain: it’s not the equivalent of a system image, because it fit on 3 DVDs.

In all, my buddy is in great shape now. I made a Windows ‘Repair’ Disk, this Recovery Disk set of DVDs, the original recovery partition on the hard drive, and the fully-updated machine in a system image that I’ll keep on an external hard drive for him.

I should have had a lot more than 37 but hopefully, more will follow after SP1 is installed.

SP1 was the first huge impediment I faced. Windows Update didn’t detect it, so I downloaded it and tried to use the standalone installer. For whatever reason, it failed at least 5 times before it finally managed to install. It was after that that the troubles really started to accumulate, with the infamous 238 updates, most of which failed. You know the rest of the story…

Hope your experience is far less aggravating than mine!

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The recovery disks you were prompted to create are a copy of the recovery partition and are bootable, but they will take the machine back to out of the box, regardless of which updates have been installed.

I think it’s always a good idea to permanently change the boot order so that it checks the DVD and USB drives before the internal HDD.

Those 23/14 updates I was originally offered have been reduced to 9/4 after I cleaned out the bloat, but after it still at 0 KB/0% after about 3 hours, I ran the Windows Update trouble shooter but cancelled that after it was stuck at searching for updates online for a little over half an hour.

I may just stop the download and get on with installing the rest of my programs and leave the updates until this month’s normal updates to see what it does.

Each time I’ve installed SP1, where it says if the download doesn’t start in n secs – click here, that has taken me back to the selection page and when done the Try again, it has downloaded/installed fine.

NB – I think I’m going to have to put Adblock Plus back on here as the page keeps freezing when previewing or moving between threads while waiting for the adverts to sort themselves out.

I dumped it because it was crashing IE as the faulting module with a 0xc0000005 error.

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The recovery disks you were prompted to create are a copy of the recovery partition and are bootable, but they will take the machine back to out of the box, regardless of which updates have been installed.

I was afraid of that. It’s basically of little use then, unless the hard drive with the recovery partition goes bad or you don’t have a suitable backup image…

I think it’s always a good idea to permanently change the boot order so that it checks the DVD and USB drives before the internal HDD.

I tend to just leave it with the HDD first, because I don’t like the added boot delay to check for a DVD/CD, and change it, if necessary, by going into the setup program when a change is necessary. Just personal preference…

I may just stop the download and get on with installing the rest of my programs and leave the updates until this month’s normal updates to see what it does.

It’ll be interesting to see how that all plays out.

Each time I’ve installed SP1, where it says if the download doesn’t start in n secs – click here, that has taken me back to the selection page and when done the Try again, it has downloaded/installed fine.

It was much more cumbersome & aggravating for me. Must be karma… 🙂

NB – I think I’m going to have to put Adblock Plus back on here as the page keeps freezing when previewing or moving between threads while waiting for the adverts to sort themselves out.

Ads on here — the forum page? I don’t use adblockers at all, and there’s not a single ad to be found as I read the posts.

I dumped it because it was crashing IE as the faulting module with a 0xc0000005 error.

Ah, IE. The only thing I ever use that monstrosity for is for Microsoft sites that require it. And if you’re still pre=SP1, aren’t you stuck with IE8? That’s one of the worst version out there! For the record, I use Firefox the most, followed by Chrome, and, occasionally, Opera.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m not an avid Microsoft hater, but I seriously dislike IE and, in particular, this Windows 7 update issue and their attempts to shove Win 10 down the throats of those who don’t want it.

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I decided to change the update settings to auto and when the alert appeared on the Shutdown button, it said it was installing 1 update.

Given the length of time it took that, I figured it was the one for MSRT – it was.

Another shutdown saw the other important ones auto install – haven’t gotten around to enabling the Optional ones to download yet as I kept getting a delay on the audio icon on boot up.

That’s where the “fun” began.

When it was installing the Realtek driver, there must have been a driver conflict with Norton as I got the Action Centre alert that Norton was switched off and a reboot just left me with an empty desktop – did a power shutdown and then Last Known Good Config.

Still haven’t got the audio driver to install yet as nothing happened after I run the download again.

I saved the next download and I’m going to run that as an admin to see if it fares any better – but having a break for the moment 🙂

Having it check the DVD and USB drives first doesn’t impact start up times – my Win 7 boots up in about 50 secs.

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