Windows update never stops checking for updates

aoetalks said:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3102810 should speed things up. After installing this it took only a few minutes to scan for updates on a fresh Win7 SP1 install.

This worked for me too. Google searching for "Windows 7 updates take forever" yields pages upon pages of results.

I am so glad I am going to be done with Windows on or before MS stops supporting Windows 7 (though I suppose you could make the case they are only half-heartedly supporting it now).

I'm glad that manually installing the latest "KB....." file works for most people. For me, however, even the Manual Install software boots by "searching for updates on this computer".....which, of course, never ends either. Consequently, all the wonderful update files that people are manually installing, does NOT work for me.
Any other ideas ?

Incidentally, I also tried creating a seamless Win7 install (with updates and drivers) using NTlite. Guess what ? NTlite wouldn't create the image file because it couldn't "integrate KB.......... into the disk file". So much fun I'm having...........

robebcan said:

I'm glad that manually installing the latest "KB....." file works for most people. For me, however, even the Manual Install software boots by "searching for updates on this computer".....which, of course, never ends either. Consequently, all the wonderful update files that people are manually installing, does NOT work for me.
Any other ideas ?

Install KB 3102810 with the computer NOT connected to the internet. It takes a few minutes, but will install. As you discovered, trying to install it while connected to the internet will take much, much longer.

Many thanks to aoetalks for putting me on to KB3102810 in the first place and KB3112343 and KB3138612 that supersede it. I am forced to use Windows 7 on my old ASUS G73Jw as the latest BIOS is incompatible with Windows 10. On replacing my older Win7 HD, I was plagued with a) WU downloads never started and thereafter b) Searching for Updates anew never completed. In addition to the problems mentioned, I also noticed the system date was once several years behind and once a week ahead. WU cannot function with an incorrect date. I am unsure if installing IE11 helped, but here's my action list that I followed:

• Check the system date & time is correct!
• Uninstall any Gadgets as they are incompatible with IE11
• Install IE11 manually
• Reboot
• Disconnect the computer from the network
• Install KB 3138612 (or whatever the latest version is)
• Reboot
• Check the system date & time is correct!
• run Windows Update - Check for Updates

To my surprise and delight, 132 updates were identified in under 15 minutes.
To my enormous surprise, selecting a few for download & install, the download began immediately!
Thanks again for super advice in this thread

Nice fix!

tim1mw said:

Hi All,

I've been having a major problem with windows update for the last week or so, it's getting stuck "Checking for updates". Not only that, but I'm seeing this problem on 3 different installations with different underlying hardware. The 3 systems are:

1- VitrualBox (Linux Host) running Win7 Pro 32bit. This was last used July 2015 and was fully updated then.
2- Thinkpad X61 with SSD (which does NOT report 4k physical sectors/advanced format). Clean install this week of W7 Pro 64bit SP1 from official Microsoft retail disc, so no manufacturer extras.
3 - VirtualBox (Linux Host, different underlying hardware to install 1) running Win7 Pro 32 Bit, clean install this week. I did this one as an experiment after the other 2 failed to work.

All 3 systems exhibit the same problem when trying to update, the "Checking for updates" process never completes and after a period of activity, the svchost.exe process will sit at the top of the process display with unchanging memory usage and it will consume 100% of a single processor core, indicating to me that it is stuck in a single thread race condition. This continues to be the case even if I leave the computers for several hours.

I have used the automatic Windows "Fixit" for windows update on all systems, it did no good.

I have followed all of the instructions on this page:

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

to no avail.

I have used the SURT tool and run sfc /scannow. There are no error codes to report. CBS Logs from system (2) attached.

I have spent probably 10 to 12 hours over several days trying to persuade the updates to install and have followed numerous suggestions from Google searches. Nothing makes any difference to any of the above installs.

The Linux installs on the VirtualBox based systems report no hardware problems and are working perfectly. I have one further Windows 7 native install (the only one I use regularly), which is successfully receiving updates, this is the only one which isn't trying to download more than one months worth of updates.

Since I'm experiencing this problem on multiple systems with different hardware and only seemingly where more than a months worth of updates are being looked for, I am seriously wondering if Microsoft have put out a combination of updates in the last few months which causes an endless loop of dependency resolution for some setups if you haven't been installing updates every month. Has this ever been known to happen? Linux update tools will sometimes fail for a similar reason, although they don't normally get stuck in endless loops, I can conceive of it happening.

I'd appreciate any suggestions, but I suspect that I may have to wait until the next patch Tuesday and hope that somebody at MS deals with this then. If this was just one system, I would assume a fault with the computer, but 3 installations (2 of them new) with the same fault makes me very suspicious.

I'm having the same issue. Clean install of Win 7 Pro 64bit. It is "activated." No matter how I have the update settings set, it doesn't check. When I manually check it just sits there "searching for updates." I'm connected to the net, always. Computer doesn't sleep. I let mine sit for 3 days with no change. That is beyond patience. There is a problem with update.

Created an account to help thank everyone and to help any other poor souls that encountered this terrible bug.

There are a lot of methods thrown in but I feel like I found the one that TRUELY works and you won't have to wait hours for.

1) Turn off automatic updates in Windows Update.
2) Download KB3172605, KB3020369, KB3102810, KB3112343. I do not know which one is the one that fixed it but these are the ones that were thrown around in the thread and one of them fixed it.
3) UNPLUG YOUR INTERNET CORD.
4) Restart your computer,
5) Install these updates 1 by 1. Two of them required restarts.
6) Restart your computer.
7) Plug in your internet cord, turn on updates and search for updates.

Within a minute, you should have over 200 updates; let this run/download/install and it should not hang.

Good luck.

KB3138612 did it for me as well. The problem was getting it installed because stuck searching for updates on this computer...
Double click on .msu uses wusa to install and wusa seems buggy. Disconnecting network cable is suggested workaround but I only had access via rdp. Then I found this blog post: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...ithin-windows/
I followed the post, extracted the .msu into temp folder and invoked
DISM.exe /Online /Add-Package /PackagePath:c:\temp\Windows6.1-KB3138612-x64.cab
Success! Installed in under a minute. After reboot, Windows Update found all updates in approx 10 minutes.
wusa is evil.