windows update not working

[tickedoff64]

I had to do a complete recovery re-install of my windows 7 and although everything else appears fine, the windows update function will not work despite my now doing a full recovery 3 times and also running all of microsofts fix it programs for this problem, also tried several youtube fixes but nothing works, getting desperate now. It just says checking for updates and the little bar just keeps on going across forever with nothing else happening....HELP..

[WAWood]

tickedoff64

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

I read your post about problems with Windows Update and wanted to help.

I continue to support a bunch of Win7 PCs, some of which were rolled back from Win10 because the owners disliked Win10 so much.

But, I have noticed that recently, Windows Update has been performing really slowly on ALL these machines.

The symptoms are that it searches for HOURS -- and does not appear to make any progress!

OR .. it finds stuff, but then goes into downloading for HOURS ... and does not appear to make any progress!

It's as if MS is forcing Windows Update on older PCs to behave badly to pressure us ALL into upgrading to Win10.  Now, they wouldn't do that, would they!!

Anyway,  check for a Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Downloads\ folder.  This is where Windows Updates stores the updates it downloads and its working files.  IF it exists, Windows Update is working -- even though you see no progress.  Over time, the folder will grow until all the Updates have been downloaded.  Then, it will shrink as the Updates get applied.  When done, Windows should remove it. If it does not, you can remove the contents of that folder, but do not remove the folder itself.

And yes ... updates are taking hours (or days!) when they used to take only a few minutes.

So basically, there is nothing wrong with your PC.

Good Luck

I am a volunteer and I do not work for, nor do I represent, HP.
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[tickedoff64 · Accepted solution]

Thans for the reply, I understand what you are saying, it is just that until I mucked the computer up a couple of days ago (by stupidly following a youtube tip to speed up the computer which totally stopped it booting up) windows update was working fine and it had been since a windows 10 install and a windows 10 removal the next day a few months ago. The folder windows/softwaredistribution/download does exist with only 2 files with very long gobbledygook names and one is only 15kb and the other file is 39kb, Which seems to me to be nowhere near big enough for any update. I wondered if instead of the clean install from the recovery partition would it be any different doing a clean install from the recovery disks I made when I got the laptop? cheers

Made no difference with disk update and those 2 small updates are just adobe updates and after 3 hors straight the bar is still meandering along, my update history shows only updates from 2012 when win7 was first installed...**bleep** Microsoft!!!

P.S.

Yesterday I decided I had enough and started to install windows 10, from an earlier download, but after it started I thought "No you know you hated it" so I cancelled the install. Lo and behold about 3 hours later when I went to shutdown the laptop it said close down and install updates, so, after 4 hours of installing 251 updates and restarting it then installed another 41 updates, then some more on the next shutdown, so basically, I think the bit of installing that the windows 10 did, seemed to kickstart the updates into gear?

[TeKolakowski]

Thanks .  I have been searching for an answer for weeks.

Trying to go back to WIndows 7 because work apps do not work in Windows 10.

Have tried many fixes online to no avail.

Now reformatting for the 4th time and I will just wait it out.