WU searching forever

[Tunnelcat]

On my HP Touchsmart with Win 7 Pro 64 bit, I've run into a problem with Windows Update. I went to manually check for the December updates since the notification icon no longer shows up monthly. This time, I can't get WU to ever find any updates. It searches for ever and ever, never stopping. I even got the icon to show up claiming there are updates available after about an hour of letting it run, but if you bring up the control panel, all it shows is that WU is still searching, with no updates listed to install. I ran Microsoft's repair tool for both WU and BITS Clients, which it told me it had found and repaired several errors, but still no updates. I also installed the most recent WU client as well, no luck. This problem seems to have cropped up since the last update in November and I've run the most recent December Microsoft Malicious Software Tool, MSE and Malwarebytes and found no viruses or malware. Any suggestions?

[Krom]

I'm thinking something got corrupted somehow on your machine, since I've worked with other windows 7 machines that will not be upgrading to 10 and have been fine all along. Since you probably don't want to format and reinstall, I would suggest a hard reset of windows update, most of these should be able to do it:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/91 ... reset.html
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/s ... t-d824badc
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/971058
http://www.askvg.com/fix-windows-update ... et-script/

I linked several since some do things in different areas even though there is a fair amount of cross over, so I'd try them one at a time (probably start with the easier one click ones) and see if it helps. If one fixes it, don't bother running the rest.

[Tunnelcat]

Well, believe it or not, I finally received the updates. After running the repair tool that checks for issues with WU and BITS Clients and repairing them, then turning off WU, rebooting and turning WU back on, then just letting there and search for a half an hour, they finally popped up. Since I'd already downloaded and run the most recent Microsoft Malicious Software Tool, I didn't have to run that again. Cripes, what a pain in the......! I going to cross my fingers. Thanks for those links Krom. I hadn't run into those in all my internet searching, so I'm going to save them in case WU screws up in the future again, which it probably will. I think something's still a little henky with WU on that machine.

I also think the HP machine is getting close to it's end of life. Every time MS patches the OS, it gets a little bit slower and slower. It takes almost forever to settle down after a cold boot. Plus, now I have to wait for the hard drive to stop accessing after an MS update just to make sure there's no hang upon reboot.

By the way, is there any reason for letting BITS 4.0 run subnet level peer caching? I don't have any of my home machines linked in a domain or homegroup, so why have it doing that? BITS Client keeps throwing an error on the HP every once in a while because I think it's failed to retrieve data from one of my other computers. I know that Windows BranchCache can be disabled in the group policy editor.

[Top Gun]

I'm no expert or anything, but that definitely sounds suspiciously like a HDD that's on its last legs. Might want to make sure you have everything important backed up before it goes kaput.

[Tunnelcat]

Everything I value is backed up. If the HHD goes south, so be it. But I still think MS has been bloating up Windows 7. I had a laptop that worked fine when it was new, even with it's single core AMD processor, but after MS had patched the hell out of the OS over the couple of years I owned it, it took forever to boot, even more forever to update, let alone be even remotely usable for just surfing. I scrapped it finally.

[Krom]

You know, something worth noting is when I was running Windows 7, my machine idled at around 27% of physical memory in use. Windows 10 on the exact same machine with the exact same applications running idles at around 17% of physical memory use. So actually, Windows 10 should be faster than Windows 7 on older machines.

[Top Gun]

Yeah, but you'd still be stuck with Windows 10.

[Sirius]

Much of the time, when I have issues with Windows Update not finding or installing updates, I just... turn it off and on again. And the next time, hopefully, it works.

Not always though. Sometimes it's just being a little $%^&*.

[Tunnelcat]

You know, something worth noting is when I was running Windows 7, my machine idled at around 27% of physical memory in use. Windows 10 on the exact same machine with the exact same applications running idles at around 17% of physical memory use. So actually, Windows 10 should be faster than Windows 7 on older machines.

Can't update this particular machine. It's an older HP Touchsmart full of media center goodies and HP single touch programs. I would loose all those HP programs and Windows 10 would turn it into a brick. At least it still works for it's intended purposes, albeit slowly. As for my gaming rig, it ain't going to be upgraded to 10 either. I got a large library of older games that the newer Nvidia drivers required for running 10 would make either unplayable or too graphically glitchy. In fact, I went into gpedit and turned OFF the ability to upgrade to another version of windows completely.

[Sirius]

I don't know if the new nVidia drivers break particular games exactly, but I have been disappointed with their stability (or lack thereof).

This is another "give it a few months" thing. I think I've had less trouble lately than I did in September, even, but there is probably still some work to do. IE's hardware acceleration seemed to be particularly flaky to me.

[Foil]

The current NVidia drivers have worked perfectly on my Win10 gaming rig (GTX 680).

The primary driver issue I've had is with my Creative X-Fi card. Creative didn't have working Win10 drivers until a month or two ago. And I had to reinstall them after the last big Win10 update.

All in all, it's been "not too bad" on my gaming rig. Everything works as it should, once I installed the audio/video drivers from the manufacturer's site.

[sigma]

I have another problem.
I have Windows 7/64. I like it. But Microsoft constantly importunately suggests me to install Windows 10. I don't want to install Windows 10. How to disable automatic installation of Windows 10?

[Tunnelcat]

I have another problem.
I have Windows 7/64. I like it. But Microsoft constantly importunately suggests me to install Windows 10. I don't want to install Windows 10. How to disable automatic installation of Windows 10?

Look in your "Installed Updates" and see if you have this update, KB3035583. If so, uninstall it and hide it so Microsoft doesn't push it onto your computer again through Windows Update. From the link below:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/29 ... tices.html

I went a step further because I'm mercenary, but I'm not sure if the Russian Microsoft commands for your system are similar so you might want to check things out first.

I ran the Group Policy MMC snap-in to disable the ability to upgrade to another version of Windows. Open the "run" command from the right pane the Start Menu. Type in the command: gpedit.msc and hit OK. In the left pane, expand the list - Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components. Select the "Windows Update Center" folder and then highlight the "Turn off the upgrade to the latest version of Windows through Windows Update" policy that shows part way down the list in the right pane. "Enable" (not disable) it by right clicking on that entry and then select "enable". By default, it should say "not configured". Hopefully, that should stop the nagging. Damn Microsoft.

[sigma]

Yes, it works. Thank you, Tunnelcat

[Tunnelcat]

Glad I could help. You may want to set updates to only download "important" and not "recommended" updates. That's how Microsoft shoved that particular update down a lot of users throats, it was labeled as "recommended".