As some of you may remember, there was a major issue with Windows Update a couple of years ago. A plethora of "fixes" were recommended, hardly none of them worked 100%. The symptom was that there seemed to be no automatic updates any more and a manual update just kept rolling the circle. And the fix for that was to let the computer stay on for a few days until the updates were found. No sleep mode, no hibernation in between. Easy but boring.
Now I've come across a somewhat similar problem. Unlike the previous one, this doesn't allow manual updating. There's just a red sign saying that Windows Updates haven't been searched for and if you click the "Search for updates now" button, an error message says that the relevant service isn't running, suggesting you to restart your computer. Another symptom is that if you try to view the Update History, you get a blank page. Yet you know that the Update has worked previously so the history can't be empty.
As with the previous case, there's plenty of "fixes" offered, both by Microsoft and third party snake oil vendors. And again the real fix is so simple you can't believe it works. Simply, when in Windows Update, click "Change Settings" in the left pane. In the Important Updates drop down menu, choose "Never check for updates (not recommended)". Click OK. Go back to the Change Settings view and from the same drop down menu choose "Install updates automatically (recommended)", click OK. You should now see the green bar searching for updates and in a few minutes they should be found. In the history you'll probably see the last updates having been installed in November.
There's opinions about how to set the settings but that has been addressed in various other threads so I'll leave this one for these fixes only. Hope someone gets helped with these!
