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Wuauserv and BITS missing - re-install without OS reboot?
Hey everyone!
So.. I've got a machine on one of my networks that was victim to a nasty virus a few months back. I cleaned it and verified that it was healthy again and sent it on it's way.
Yesterday, our IP was blacklisted for spam suddenly. After checking the logs from the mail service and firewall.... the same little machine showed up as the culprit.
I pulled it into the shop and cleaned it again (different virus/trojan this time.. both times due to the user disabling the network AV) and decided to make sure this lil' guy was all up to date.
Windows update services are missing. Not only are they missing from Services.msc but also the associated files are missing. Wuauserv and BITS
I've read around and have seen people with similar problems of windows update not working. Not many have drilled down into these files being missing or described a fix for the problem.
Ordinarily, I'd just wipe the disk and re-install the OS but this particular machine has a few software applications for the company that are... um.. troublesome to re-install due to the manufacturer being a PITA about licensing and usage records. (It's all legitimate and paid for, they just register the CPU once on their servers and then tell you to go buy another copy if something happens to that machine)
I'd like to avoid a wipe/re-install if at all possible.
I've tried:
MS fixit for restarting Windows Update
Turning off automatic updates and then turning them back on again
CAT.exe tool (crisis aversion tool)
The usage of all those is what drilled me down to the fact that the files were missing out of system32 and not showing up in the services store.