Following a clean install, Windows Update remains at "Checking For Updates" forever...

Thanks Ken - I was arguing with this problem on two machines and you solved it in 7 easy steps.  5 stars

I HAVE been trying to clear up the confusion. I posted in the incorrect thread. I was having problems with BSOD and most of the time when it happened, was after downloads. Please remove me from this thread

Hi @aithfulforever,

I  can't but you can, by signing in, then clicking on the Name at the top. Then click on your Profile and under your Activity shows the list of Threads you are subscribed to. Next to the thread, it states "Stop Emails".

Click on Stop Emails to unsubscribe to this thread.

I had struggles with my Win 7 laptop going to Win 10 and a disaster with my desktop Win 7. The desktop lost the SCSI card , my USB BUS , my sound , all my DRM for both my CD's / MP3 that I had personally copied and and any videos that I had actually created. Now I did a roll back on my desktop and discovered that all of the drivers on my system had reverted to the day I built my system. By the way the desktop is a SATA drive unit and I had another drive still on Win XP and a third drive on Linux Mint and while the system died on Win 10 every piece of hardware worked fine on the other operating systems. However I had pin headed geeks claim that was why I had troubles and I should get rid of the other drives and buy all new hardware.

 In further testing and verifying it with my laptop I found that any drivers you had personally installed from a disk or from the vendors web site were usually there. The trouble is previous versions of Windows would often say "You have a driver update available" and you would install them , letting windows do it. All of those updates are lost in the upgrade because Win 10 no longer does that and blows out that info. I found it by using Drive Booster but you can use any program you want. I just let it look at my system and rather than it installing them I verified each and every driver with the vendor first. After I verified it then I let it run and all my troubles including my DRM troubles went away. The laptop that was on Win 10 had the original base drivers for all componants. I ran Drive booster but verified first before installing the updated drivers.

 I note that in previous versions of Windows the system would detect devices and ask to search for drivers for them. In Win 10 it sees the device ID right away but does nothing including installing drivers so the devices fail but also fail to produce an error. A fine example is I still use my HP Photosmart 1100 because it still runs fine. Now it worked in Win XP but there was no drivers for it in Win 7 but if I called it a HP Deskjet 930c/932c/935c then Windows 7 was happy with that and it works. In Win 10 it sees the device via ID as an HP1100 and does nothing and you can't install drivers to make it work plus it produces no error.  In other words the system goes deaf dumb and blind with no indication of anything being wrong. That is why I had so many troubles with my desktop computer. I also surmise that between troubles with Windows update agent 7.6.7600.320 and loss of the latest operating drivers that is why many people have troubles updating to Win 10. My neighbor had MS support work on his laptop for 4 days to get it from Win 8.1 to Win 10.

I see the info on here is very long with responses but it appears we both were chasing the same problem. I was reffered over to your fix. My niece had a Gateway NV53A that had a bad hard drive so I replaced it. I ordered the original software disks from Gateway and had the same troubles you had. My article is under Windows update agent 7.6.7600.320 . In my case after 7 reloads and multiple testing I found that no matter what fix you tried they often only created new troubles. in further testing i also found that my file access privledges were "messed up" because even though everything looked the same if i logged on as Adminstrater it said I was not the administrator.  Up until that update I could rename files and manipulate them but after that update I was blocked due to a lack of privledges. Thanks to your info here is what happened.

DP09 Thank you. I looked over his info and tried testing it two ways. The first was to do a restore to a time period before the update agent was applied and then download KB3083710 and KB3102810 to a USB stick then install KB 3083710 then KB3102810 and it appeared to work fine. in fact after a pause it said I had 228 additional updates.

 Now to avoid chance from me messing with the software I reload the entire system for the 8th time from the original disks that came with the laptop that I had ordered from Gateway. I added nothing extra to the system instead just dowloaded and installed updates as I had done before.  It loaded smoothly but I could not install either of those updates because it said "not applicable". As more updates were installed the rejection message changed slightly but still would not install. Now mindfull of the fact that the software I had was pre SP1 of windows 7 I still tried. As soon as SP1 update was loaded I could then install each update , do a restart and then install the next update. I then installed IE 11 update which also would not load until .net had been installed. It now downloaded and installed IE 11 and each of the .net updates then installed IE 11. I waited one day so I had a good restore point. I started it up today and it said "no updates were available" as soon as I clicked "check for updates it ran for about 15 minutes and I thought I had a problem until it said "229 updates plus 7 optional are available". As I sit here it is installing them.

 It appears that an update to intelligent updater was done that produced KB3083710 then some additional work was done and that produced KB3102810. The trouble is when MS came out with the 7.6.7600.320 update , unlike installing IE 11 which checks for all updates dependancies and installs them in sequence so it is all correct before installing IE 11 someone just "ASSUMED" or failed to think to perform a simple check to see if the others were installed first. The end result is anyone like myself that reloads a system with software that predates KB3083710 and KB3102810 will in fact have all sorts of various troubles depending upon "if / and / or" you have either one or neither of those updates installed before the system goes straight to intelligent updater 7.6.7600.320.

 It would be nice if someone at MS did a fix to that latest intelligent update so it checks for both of the previous updates first and installs them in sequence first so others do not encounter this trouble. If the installation of IE 11 can do these checks then the fix should be easy.

I HAVE been trying to clear up the confusion. I posted in the incorrect thread. I was having problems with BSOD and most of the time when it happened, was after downloads. Please remove me from this thread