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#1
Windows Update corrupt? Wrongly shows no updates before Oct 2017?
Recently, I discovered that Windows 7 Pro SP1 on one of my computers claimed it had not been activated (it had been many years ago). Unfortunately, it refused to accept the correct and fully legal and paid for key that it had been originally activated with. I resolved this problem by uninstalling Windows Update KB971033, rebooting, then running the online activation procedure again, which activated Windows correctly.
However, after this had been accomplished and I then installed a handful of October 2017 Windows Updates successfully, all of a sudden Windows Update wanted me to install very old updates from 2014 & 2015 that had been installed at the time! Then when I chose "View update history", I saw that with 2 exceptions, it showed no other updates at all other than those installed this month! The same was true when I chose "See Installed Updates"!!
That must be why it wanted to install all those old updates again: It thought no updates prior to October 2017 had ever been installed (again, with just 2 exceptions).
What's gone wrong, and how do I fix it? Note that after yet another random BSOD an hour or so ago (I've given up trying to research and correct these because they appear truly random, different from previous BSODs, and are apparently totally unrelated to anything I was doing), the system forced a Disk Check and found and repaired quite a few NTFS structure errors, which might well have something to do with this.
One repair option would be to perform a System Restore, or alternatively, restore the system entirely from a backup. Which would you recommend?