Windows Update hangs on "checking for updates". Haven't been able to install updates since Oct. 2011

Thanks a lot "Volume Z" for your help that, for all the ones who applied it, apparently solved the Windows Update Stall problem. I want to apply it too, but after so many tries in the past years, I want to prepare better before. So I try to resume:

1. Go to http://wu.krelay.de/en and apply, 1st the 6 KBs from KB3177725 to KB3109094, 2nd the last (currently KB3138615March 2016 of Mar 2016) of the KBs in the "Windows Update Client" list
2. Notice that the key install is kb3...605 but that it needs itslef prior install of kb3....369

Could you confirm (or correct)? Best would be if you had time to make yourself a resume, clear, precise, short and clear, which would be more reliable than mine. TIA,

Versailles, Mon 15 Aug 2016 00:20:20 +0200

It's enough to install KB3172605 and its prerequisite. The wu.krelay.de ones are required in order not to have earlier versions of the Windows update client bothered with them, but they do not pose a problem to 7.6.7601.23453 (KB3161647), part of KB3172605. :)

Thanks "**Volume Z**" for your « It's enough to install KB3172605 and its prerequisite », but what about putting a simple short clear unambiguous advice of what to do exactly, without having to browse the full 18 pages of this thread (and may be others) to find unambiguously what are "its prerequisite"?

The problem in Windows Update as in everything MS does is that MS nowadays (oppositely to its highly positive attitude in the era of "micro-soft" or Albuquerque and later) has fallen in love with complexity. The more complicate, the more they feel smart! They have now totally forgotten that being smart is first be able to simplify (see Percival Lovell's quote in my sig). From a tool formerly highly efficient and helpful, WU has gone to an intricate system that, after building organized failure by adding and adding through the years layers and layers of unnecessary complications, further fails daily on millions people just because of such "advices" more or less equivalent to you just look yourself for what are the pre-requisite (which would amount to redo all the work already done).

Please if it's so simple, don't you know what users have to do exactly? Experience tells that if your adviser himself is unable to tell simply, clearly, unambiguously, what to do,  then you better NOT try to follow such advice, because if you do you are almost sure to waste your time finding your way in a network of various hypotheses, uncertainties and further searches and ambiguities to solve.

So again please, if this is so simple, once the discussion well done and fruitful (as seems the case here), then please resume the findings and write it simply and clearly, step by step, detailed and complete yet short and clear. TIA,

Versailles, Mon 15 Aug 2016 09:25:25 +0200

Thanks SO MUCH for your help - solved my issue and all the updates installed successfully.