Does Windows 7 tell you it’s installing updates every time you shut down the computer?
And do those updates keep failing to install?
I’ve got a fix for you.
This is Dave’s Tech Rescue, where I solve your problems with computers, Internet and
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Today’s question:
Windows 7 keeps trying to install updates, but they always fail. This means every time
I turn on my computer it takes ages. How can I get updates working again?
Well this is normally caused by something getting jammed in the Windows update system.
And in this video I’m going to show you how to un-jam it.
If you follow these steps you should fix the problem, but please bear in mind I’m not
responsible for anything that goes wrong on your computer. If you’re not sure what you’re
doing, you should take your computer to an expert.
The first step is to stop some services on your computer, to do with Windows Update,
so we’re free to go onto the second step. In the second step we’ll be clearing your
computer’s updates cache.
The third step is to start the services again, and the fourth and final step is to get the
computer to check for updates and install them.
Don’t worry if that sounds a lot, I’m going to take you through it all step by step.
So, let’s start by stopping the services.
Click on your Start Menu, and type in cmd.
You’ll see cmd appear under programs.
Right-click on this, then click Run As Administrator.
This gives us the Command Prompt. We’re going to type in 4 commands, and we’re going
to press Enter after each one.
Don’t worry too much about the computer’s response when you press Enter, I want to keep
this guide as simple as possible.
Type in: net stop wuauserv, and press Enter.
Then type: net stop cryptSvc, and press Enter.
Then type: net stop bits, and press Enter.
Lastly, type: net stop msiserver, and press Enter.
Now you need to open Windows Explorer - that’s the file system where you find things like
documents.
On the left hand side, click on Computer.
Open your main hard drive, which is normally the C drive.
Open the Windows folder.
And look for a folder called SoftwareDistribution.
Now this folder contains the updates your computer has downloaded, and we want to delete
it. But it’s a good idea to give this folder a different name, rather than just deleting
it.
So, I’m going to rename the folder, by putting .OLD at the end.
If it asks for administrator permission, you should click Continue.
Now we need to do the same thing with another folder.
Click on Computer again, and go into the C drive, and Windows, as we did before.
Now open the System32 folder, and look for a folder called catroot2.
And we want to rename this folder to catroot2.OLD.
And click Continue.
Now we need to start the services again.
So, go back to the Command Prompt.
We’re going to type the same 4 commands as before, but this time we’re going to
use start instead of stop.
So, type in: net start wuauserv, and press Enter.
Then type: net start cryptSvc, and press Enter.
Then type: net start bits, and press Enter.
And lastly, type: net start msiserver, and press Enter.
Now, you can close the command prompt.
At this point, it’s a good idea to restart the computer.
When the computer starts up again, we’re going to get it to check for updates, and
start installing those updates.
Click on the Start Menu, and go to Control Panel.
Click on System and Security, and then Windows Update.
Now this screen normally tells you when the computer last checked for updates, but because
we’ve reset the updates system, it says Never.
You still have all the updates that have been installed in the past though.
We just need to get it updating again. So click the button marked Check for updates.
It takes a few minutes to work out what updates are available, but eventually you’ll see
a screen like this, saying there are some updates available.
Click Install updates, and let the computer do its thing.
If you’re curious to see what happened behind the scenes, you can go back into Windows Explorer,
and open C, and Windows.
You’ll see that the computer has now created a new SoftwareDistribution folder, and that’s
where the updates are being downloaded to from now on.
One more thing - let’s just check that the computer is set to install updates automatically.
Go back to the screen that’s downloading updates, and click on Change settings.
Under Important Updates, it should say Install Updates Automatically.
When you’ve checked this, click Ok.
Now your computer just needs some time to download any updates that are available. You
can go back to using your computer as normal, and it will download and install the updates
in the background.
And don't worry if your computer still seems to be failing to install some updates after
this fix, because it’s likely to have a lot of updates to catch up on. And sometimes
it will try to install more than one update at the same time, fail, but then succeed later.
So if you’re getting failures, just keep restarting your computer, and it will get
there eventually.
Please let me know in the comments below how you got on, and if you found this video helpful
please give it the thumbs up. If you’d like to see more tutorials like
this from me in future, click on my face below, and hit the red subscribe button.
And while you’re here, why not check out one of my other videos?
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.