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I just got a new desktop computer (Gateway FX6840-03e) It has Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit (not sure what service pack, I'm new to windows 7 as of this computer so i'm not sure where to find that information). It came with a norton security that i didn't bother to activate, I uninstalled it and followed up with Norton Removal Tool. I then installed AVG Free 2011 edition
When I went to Windows Update I have the red x shield and clicking on the check for updates button gives me the error "Windows cannot check for updates because the service is not running. You may need to restart the computer." Windows update service is running in services.msc though.
The first thing I did that i had read about on the product reviews for the computer since it seemed to be a problem with a few other people that bought the computer was to disable the windows update service the go into C:\windows\SoftwareDistribution and delete everything in there and re-enable windows update service afterwords. According to the reviews this worked for most people. However the problem still persisted for me. Google searching has led me to these forums and i've gone through a few threads but haven't gotten a solution yet.
I've run the windows update troubleshooter with no luck
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Open-the-Windows-Update-troubleshooter
I ran the System File Checker tool
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929833
It came back with one problem, but the log file created was blank
I ran the Fix It tool in both default and aggressive modes
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058
And in one post somebody mentioned that ATI Catylist Control Center was causing their problem so I uninstalled that with no luck (I have re-installed that)
There have been many restarts between all of that above and now i'm not sure what else to try.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Well doing some searches on the errors in the windowsupdate.log eventually led me to find that it the problem had something to do with my hard drive being large (1TB) and "Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST)" drivers needed to be updated. Once I got the driver updated my windows update started working fine. Thanks for the help that led me to the answer.
Well doing some searches on the errors in the windowsupdate.log eventually led me to find that it the problem had something to do with my hard drive being large (1TB) and "Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST)" drivers needed to be updated. Once I got the driver updated my windows update started working fine. Thanks for the help that led me to the answer.
This solution worked for me as well. Get the driver directly from Intel's site. I only had a 500GB but still had the same issue. Working now. Thanks.
Well doing some searches on the errors in the windowsupdate.log eventually led me to find that it the problem had something to do with my hard drive being large (1TB) and "Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST)" drivers needed to be updated. Once I got the driver updated my windows update started working fine. Thanks for the help that led me to the answer.
Phabin, I need to thank you profusely for this post. After spending days researching and attempting every sort of fix imaginable for this problem with Vista, some that probably affected my system stability, I was ready to throw in the towel and wipe this system out after I'd imaged my drive to a larger drive.
Then I decided I'd spend 3 hours scouring every single little link I didn't look at before, in case someone had something to offer outside the usual Microsoft links that don't work... and sure enough, I finally found yours. Many hours wasted...
Adding some keywords to this post in the event future people search this for help:
Windows Vista 7 x64 "Windows update cannot currently check for updates because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer" hard drive upgrade ghost image larger.
Thank you thank you thank you. After Googling around for 2 days and trying everything I found nothing fixed Windows Update after I replaced my HD with a larger one until I came across this post. Went to Intel and downloaded the latest RST driver and upon reboot WU started working again.
After trying "everything" - your suggestion worked like a charm.
Intel update fixed my 8000FFFF error and enabled the updates!
Super,
Thank you
