New Win7 install will not do windows update ***FINALLY FIXED***

Well perhaps good news is contagious…  Last night I ended all the updates since they have been running for 3 hours without end and set the computer to shut down.  I was shocked to see that the computer announced that it had 220 updates and not to power down…

I was not sure what caused this change, perhaps the update software that Gerry Cornell pointed me to or the fact that I upgrade the framework???

Since the number of upgrade was so large, I wonder if I do an upgrade on my laptop overnight this will also help?  So I left the desktop to do the power down upgrade and the laptop to do its regular windows update spinning endlessly as usual.

This morning at about 5:30 am I heard the laptop re-boot….. I checked and it had updated hundreds of files, a quick re-run of windows update showed the NORMAL results which it is reported there was only one more essential update and a bunch of non-essential ones.  I ran the essential one and then it said it is done.

For the desktop, I ran another windows update and it is now still spinning and it has been running the last 4 hours.  I guess there are still lots to go.

So the lesson here for me and others is Gerry is correct – give it time as apparently one can be facing lots of updates and just because it is spinning for hours does not mean it is hung up.  Thanks for all the help.  As it is, I have to leave town now for a few days but will report back when I return.

FIXED!

My laptop is fixed and is currently installing the new updates (I've probably jinxed it now and it'll come up with an error).

What I did was ask the help desk where you chat with a microsoft technician, they took remote access control of my laptop, and after about an hour of playing around with it (I tried to follow what they were doing - lots of command prompt and things) they restarted it and said that it should be fine now. I was very dubious as it just showed the same hanging page so thought I'd just have to go back and ask them again the next day, however I left it overnight and lo and behold this morning there were 208 updates ready and waiting!

The technician was really helpful, they offered me paid support from microsoft (I think they have to do this as standard) but I politely declined and they carried on fixing it for me for free anyway!

They gave me some options also, they said if what they'd done didn't work, then I could try searching with an ethernet cable (sometimes a more stable connection is all you need) or if that didn't work, they offered me a newer version of windows 7 that had all the updates already downloaded if I wanted to do a whole OS reinstall (I said I'd rather not do that, but it was nice to have the option if all else failed). They also said that they would offer telephone support for free throughout the entire reinstall if I needed help.

He also confirmed to me that they fix this problem a lot and it definitely wasn't an error at microsoft's end, or anything to do with the SSD/HDD etc.

Overall, really impressed with the help desk service, I would definitely recommend asking them if you still need help. Go here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/contactus?wa=wsignin1.0# and click "services and apps" to open a popup window where you can chat.

One more thing however, once my laptop had found all the updates, I clicked install and it came up with error message 80240016. I googled it, followed the instructions on this link here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/windows-update-error-80240016 and it worked perfectly second time around.

Just to confirm, now that I've finished writing this post, my updates have fully installed!

Hope this is helpful to anyone still struggling!

Okay

Switch to Never check for updates

Restart your computer

Switch back to auto and restart again

verify the 4 services are running and on auto..

It's always been on automatic - that was never the problem.  The problem is even when you manually ask it to update, it just sits and spins and never gives you the list to give  an OK to go ahead to update...

I would just set the updates to automatic in settings

And uncheck the Install recommended updates the same way box.

Then restart your computer and let it sit do not manually check for updates.

Just verify the processes I already posted are set to Automatic and running.