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MS Security Essentials not updating itself
I'm running Windows 7 64 bit on a Toshiba laptop. Have both MS SecurityEssentials and Malwarebytes Pro installed and have had no problems with either for years. Within this past week I was checking to see if a couple of MS updates had been installed and notices in my Update History section that Security Essentials had failed to install it's daily definitions update since March 26th. I don't know of any particular event that has occurred on my system to have stopped these definitions from installing. Security Essentials will run it's regularly daily check at around 7AM with no problem - but it's not getting the definition update prior to performing this scheduled check.
I attempted to "force" the definition update within Security Essentials itself by going to the Update tab but when I do that - the installation progress bar stops at about a third and goes no further. I can only accomplish the definition update if I get it from this source
https://www.microsoft.com/security/....48b7ISKFcrqA)()
where you can download the proper definitions for a 64 bit system.
I realized while trying to work this problem, that I had not been able to download or install any MS windows updates that had become available this week. (I have my system set to notify me when updates are available but not to download or install). There were a couple I wanted to download and install and I am unable to get these to download. I know that everyone is experiencing long wait times these days for downloads and I've had my share as well but these absolutely will not download - at all - no matter how long I leave my system running.
So - putting 2 and 2 together - I'm wondering if some setting has gotten messed up somewhere that is keeping me from being able to download and install ANYTHING. It sure seems that way! I tried to do a System Restore going back to March 24 - to get ahead of the day that the MS Security Essentials last successfully download their definition updates. I turned off MS Security Essentials before attempting System Restore but forgot and left Malwarebytes Pro on - but System Restore did not work and gave me an error message of 0x80070005. I guess maybe it was a good thing it didn't work as I read afterwards that doing a System Restore with Malwarebytes installed usually "breaks" Malwarebytes and it needs to be reinstalled afterwards??
Can anyone help me? I'm not sure where to go from here. I'm concerned that MS Security Essentials is unable to get it's daily definitions by itself (which is was doing up until March 26th) and that I apparently am unable to do a System Restore to see if I could correct this problem. Also, I'm unable to download and install any MS updates. I did see this support article to try and fix MS Security Essentials
https://www.microsoft.com/security/....48b7ISKFcrqA)()
but in looking it over I wasn't sure that this looked like something I wanted to attempt. One thing I did notice is that it has you going into "services" and stopping and starting "automatic update service" - which when I looked on my "services" I don't even show "automatic update service". You suppose that could be a part of this problem?
I seem to have a combination of issues here and I hope someone can make sense of these - don't know if they are related or not. I'd appreciate any help but should caution that I'm not a terribly experienced computer person so layman's terms would be greatly appreciated!
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