why has vista stopped automatic updates?

There is no need to use Google to search for the Vista SP2 security updates released on Patch Tuesdays (the second Tuesday of the month).  Links to every March 2017 Security Bulletin were posted in the Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for March 2017, but you must still review each bulletin to find the correct download links for updates that apply to Vista SP2, IE9 and other MS products like Microsoft Office / Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack.  A quicker method is to use the searchable databases on the MS Security TechNet site like the main Security Update Guide and its associated Software Update Summary (the latter is less flexible and can only be used for quick searches by date range and/or keywords like "Vista" or "Internet Explorer").

In most cases, there is also no need to manually install the dozen or so security patches released for Vista SP2 machines every Patch Tuesday.  There is a well-established workaround originally documented by German blogger Dalai at http://wu.krelay.de/en/ that requires users to manually a small number of "speed up" patches (typically one new patch each month for a Windows kernel-mode driver update for Win32k.sys or a Microsoft graphics component) that should reduce the initial "Checking for updates..." phase of Windows Update from several hours, or even days, down to minutes or a few hours. The full set of required speed up patches are listed in this thread in Volume Z's post <here> and you only need to install the speed up patches that are missing from your system - the number of speed up patches you are required to install will depend on the number of months it's been since Windows Update last ran successfully on your machine.  Having a Microsoft Office or Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack can significantly increase your "Checking for updates.." hangs, so Volume Z has included download links for the March 2017 security updates for these Office-related products as well.

An alternate solution is to use Torsten Wittrock's WSUS Offline Update tool to download and install all important security updates for Vista SP2, IE9 and MS Office.  See Note 6 of my instructions on page 1 of m#l's thread Updates not working, it has been searching for updates for hours for comments about this tool as well as it0uchpod's recent feedback in ScousaJAY's thread windows update just seems to hang while checking.  Using this automated tool eliminates the need for Windows Update and is much simpler than using Google to compile a list of every Vista SP2, IE9 and MS Office update released every Patch Tuesday and then manually installing every update.

32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.0.1 * NIS v22.9.1.12 * MBAM Premium v2.2.1

HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

All I know about this problem is that my Vista machine stopped doing updates last summer- then last week, all of a sudden with me doing nothing- it downloaded 31 updates, most of which were for Office 2007. And, on the same day, my Win7 machine, also which had done no updates since last summer, also did about the same number of updates, mostly for Office 2010. ON THE SAME DAY. Go figure. All I can conclude is that MS has purposefully done this- stopped updating then started it up again. What other explanation is there? At least my Win 8.1 machine is continuing with updates regularly. MS should fully explain what's going on.

Joe

Joseph,

I'm beginning to think Micro$oft is doing this to force people onto Windows 10.

OUgrad,

thanks for your response to my sequence question.  I'm sure that your suggestion, coupled with Great White North's follow-on note, will address any further concerns I may have with this problem.

Regards,

Frederick