Windows 7 Update Stuck on Checking for Updates

Question

I recently ran into the same problem that quite a number of users are having after a fresh install of Windows 7 SP1 64 bit. I have recently had to recover a number of Windows Laptops to their factory installed settings. Windows 7 Update got stuck on all of them. After much research on a number of sights, and much trial and error I was able to solve the issue by installing the following updates manually in the order below. I restarted each laptop after each of the updates were installed. Once all the updates were installed I then ran Windows Update which found more updates to install. I have used this solution on a number of different laptops and it has worked on all of them. I hope this helps those users having similar issues.

UPDATE ORDER

1. WindowsUpdateAgent-7.6-x64.exe
2. KB3020369
3. KB3125574
4. KB3138612
5. KB3102810
6. KB3172605
7. KB3050265
8. KB3065987
9. KB3161664
10. KB3135445

Solution

I have verified this several times on my own. There are only two updates that you need to install manually:

KB3020369

KB3172605

Install them in that order, and the second one will prompt a reboot. After that, you should be able to install other updates normally. BTW, this is assuming that SP1 is already installed.

Comments

[ganesh]

This seems normal, both for windows 7 and windows 8. Updates simply are not found (or take more than 12 days to find, I hgave up after 12 days of looking for updates). Even manually installing a windows update agent, IE11 etc no longer helps. And just in case it might be a personal fault, UI tried with two clean installs, with only windows updates (ran for a full weekend on a modern I5-6600K before finding them), tired with a clean win7 on a 2009 era core2 (gave up after two weeks) and I got confirmation from a friend that her laptop also has failed to find updates for windows 8 since...

[ganesh]

... half a year. It seems Microsoft is pushing very hard to get people to migrate to windows 10.

[fixer1234]

@Chas, this has been flagged as a possible duplicate of another question but actually, it's an answer. You originally had the same question, but this describes your solution. This is likely to be closed here, either as a duplicate question or because it's "unclear" as a question. I would recommend deleting it here and reposting it as an answer on the thread this was identified as a duplicate of. As near as I can tell, this doesn't duplicate any of the solutions posted there. Nice work, BTW.

[magicandre1981]

no, you only need the April 2015 servicing stack and july 2016 rollup, no other update is required.

[DavidPostill]

What is your question? This looks like an answer not a question.

[Ed999]

I have had this problem for a year now, on two separate laptops each running Windows 7 64bit. In my opinion Microsoft are deliberately pushing out so-called updates that are intended to break the update service, then withholding the fix, in the hope of forcing users onto an inferior O/S, namely Windows 10.

[fixer1234]

After recommending to repost this on the other thread, I see several answers there and Charles Burge's answer here identify a subset of your list as the key items. So you might want to verify whether the entire list is required.

[BeowulfNode42]

This seemed to be a problem that developed around Oct 2016. See nuangel.net/2016/10/… who recommends updating the windows update client support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2887535 before the above updates are attempted . Another trick mentioned on that page is that you should stop the "Windows Update" service and the "Background Intelligent Transfer Service" service before running each of the installers for those updates.

[Charles Burge]

Oh yeah, I forgot that step. Before manually installing the updates above, stop the update service with "net stop wuauserv" (in an elevated command window).

[jdgregson]

The question is not related to uninstalling individual updates. The problem described here will be encountered by anyone who installs Windows 7 ever again in the future. A fresh install of Windows 7 does not know how to correctly check for updates anymore, and the steps mentioned in this thread should help users get Windows Update working again.

[Ed999]

@CharlesBurge: Thank you, your answer is the correct answer. It solved this fault on my Windows 7 64-bit laptop, at the first attempt. I stopped the Windows Update service, downloaded the two update files from the Microsoft website, installed them, went through the reboot, restarted the update service, and a check for updates then worked.

[Ed999]

Thank you. I had misunderstood the original reply by Chas Smth.