Windows 7 Windows 7 has not update since 29 April 2014

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mkelly521

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Windows 7 Home Premium w/SP1 and 64 bit operating system has not downloaded a windows update since KB2929437 on April 29, 2014. Update set to automatic but I get an icon that says Windows cannot automatically check for updates. When I manually check it tells me to restart my computer to download important updates but nothing is downloaded. Have tried Windows troubleshooting without results. Any help out there?
 
Solution
You might look at your update history and see if one is showing as failed and not finishing later. It is hard to guess what might be wrong. There is a WindowsUpdate.log which might give some clues, but it is supposed to contain some private data so folks don't recommend posting it and it doesn't always help. But if you want to look through it, look for entries which mention "failed" and start from the bottom up. You may have to trace it back to where the updates stopped being successful.

But one way we used to try to repair Windows Update was to rename or delete the SoftwareDistribution folder in the Windows folder. It will force the system to recheck all the updates and reset the meta data which may have become corrupted.
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Run a Command Prompt with elevated permissions in Windows "Run as Administrator"

Perform the following operations:

Code: 
net stop wuauserv
net stop bits
rd /s /q %windir%\softwaredistribution
net start bits
net start wuauserv
wuauclt.exe /detectnow

This will reset Windows Update.
 
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It may spend a lot of time repopulating the Windows Update catalog files by downloading them online. Can you give the error code you receive when it fails?
 
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Start -> Search -> Event Viewer -> System

Look for Source: WindowsUpdateClient and report what errors it is reporting

Example:

 
Last edited by a moderator:
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A few of the errors in the log:
Error 8/1/2015 3:51:32 PM Service Control Manager 7034 None

The Windows Search service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 12 time(s).


Error 8/1/2015 3:51:32 PM Service Control Manager 7023 None

The Windows Search service terminated with the following error:

Transaction support within the specified resource manager is not started or was shut down due to an error.


Error 8/1/2015 3:40:53 PM Service Control Manager 7034 None

The Windows Search service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 11 time(s).


Error 8/1/2015 3:40:53 PM Service Control Manager 7023 None

The Windows Search service terminated with the following error:

Transaction support within the specified resource manager is not started or was shut down due to an error.


OLDEST LOG ENTRY:


Error 5/5/2015 7:48:31 AM Service Control Manager 7034 None

The Windows Search service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 29 time(s).
 
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You might look at your update history and see if one is showing as failed and not finishing later. It is hard to guess what might be wrong. There is a WindowsUpdate.log which might give some clues, but it is supposed to contain some private data so folks don't recommend posting it and it doesn't always help. But if you want to look through it, look for entries which mention "failed" and start from the bottom up. You may have to trace it back to where the updates stopped being successful.

But one way we used to try to repair Windows Update was to rename or delete the SoftwareDistribution folder in the Windows folder. It will force the system to recheck all the updates and reset the meta data which may have become corrupted.
 
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Solution
My update history only goes back to 5/5/15 while the problem dates from the last successful download of 4/29/14. Re the SoftwareDistribution folder - if I delete or rename it, how do I replace it?
 
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It will rebuild the folder.

The WindowsUpdate.log will normally keep archive copies. It starts new ones periodically which are continuations. But you may not need to go that far back to see a problem. Hopefully renaming the folder will get you back up and running. But give it time to rebuild the data. You may manually need to check for updates a few times and day and restart to make sure it isn't waiting on a reboot. You might even shut completely down every now and then.
 
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It rebuilt the folder but still will not get updates. I went to Microsoft Fixit and the results are shown below attached.


 
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