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.