Windows 7 Checking For Updates stuck forever

Wow! an understandable/do-able fix for the dreaded endless "Searching for updates" and other symptoms of a stuck Windows Update Agent Service, Many thanks for the advice in the July 22 post and other recent posts by VZ, and to some slight degree to MS for getting their act together and releasing KB3020369. Although how are you meant to obtain it through Windows Update with a non working Windows Update Agent?

I have spent hours/day's trying to update a friends Win 7 laptop that had slowed to a crawl as Windows Update grabbed big chunks of memory and CPU. It was set on Auto-Update but rarely got used with an active broadband connection and hadn't been allowed to fully auto-update for months/years. Initially updating went ok until the Windows Update Agent 7.6.7600.320 got installed then everything came to a stop. I tried various MS fixits, later update agents and other suggestions found in these pages and elsewhere

• I came accross and manually installed one KB that cured the memory leak which was useful. Some updates would arrive - though non were shown in the downloading window, it was only by occasionally looking for the little yellow updates waiting to be installed warning triangle on the Shutdown button that their presence showed up. Eventually all activity came to a stop again.

So I manually down loaded the two updates suggested by VZ, stopped the Windows Update Service, set Automatic Updates to Never Check For Updates, unticked the Receive Recommended updates with Important Updates option and rebooted, then installed the seemingly critical KB3020369 Servicing Stack Update April 2015, rebooted, then installed the latest monthly Update Rollup for July 2016 KB3172605, rebooted and manually started Windows Update, after five minutes (AMAZING!!) I got some 80 or so Important Updates and 60 or so Optional/Recommended Updates. Installed all the Important Updates without a hitch, rebooted, manually ran Win Update again until there were no more Important updates.

I have ignored the Optional/Recommended Updates for the time being until I have time to go through them individually because of the various Win 10 nagware/telemetry/suspicious and odd updates.

Because my friends laptop is not used with broadband access, I have also left updates to Never Check for Updates which I hope will stop the Windows Update Service from using 50% of the CPU when trying to do an Auto-Update over a non existent broadband connection.

As a slight aside, does anyone know what will happen to the "Recommended" Win 10 nagware/telemetry updates now the free upgrade date cut off point has passed? Will they get withdrawn, or do they still need hiding?

Thanks again VZ!

Set automatic updates to "Never check for updates" and restart Windows.

:)

This worked worked for me!

(After installing the 2 updates I was skeptical because it did not look much different than before; after selecting 'check for updates' it just went 'off to the races' for several minutes.  But this time, after only looking for about 5 minutes, it found 97 update to be installed!)

Thanks for the simple directions!

This has worked for me every time:

The solution:

Stop the Windows Update Service (wuauserv).

Download and install KB3050265

reboot

Download and install KB3102810

Reboot and check for updates again. All of our machines found their required updates in less than 5 minutes.

This worked perfectly for me, Vicky, thank you so much.

I'd just upgraded an old Vista desktop to 7, hoping to upgrade it again to 10 before the free period ends.  Windows Updated it two or three times including 7 SP1, but after that it would just stall on checking for updates and I was starting to panic.  No advice helped except yours.  I'd stopped the Windows Update service and renamed %windir%/Software Distribution directory a couple times, but then saw your post, renamed it again, ran those in the exact order you said, and updated again.

Update log was much more active this time, paused for ten minutes a couple times, and in half an hour it showed me 225 or so important updates and 50 or so optional ones, while before it had gone 5+ hours without showing anything but "checking for updates".

Downloading the new ones now, at this rate I'll get 10 with no problems.

Never thought to manually install windows update updates.

Thanks!

Sure. It's the source of any update downloaded manually. :)