Solution to ‘Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer’. Dec 2017

Anonymous
2017-12-11T20:19:37+00:00

I have seen many people experiencing the problem of ‘Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer’.

Today, 11th Dec 2017, I have had exactly the same problem with going in to Windows Update on Win 7 PC’s and getting this same scenario when I try to update windows.  I go in to Control Panel and Windows Update.  There is a red X in the box and when I click ‘Check for Updates’ I get the message

‘Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer’.

I restarted the PC and still had the same the same problem and I also checked the Update Service was running and it was.

I have One laptop and 4 PC’s at home all running Win 7 so I tried the same procedure of updating and all but one had the same issue as above.  I contacted a few friends whom I know have PC’s running Win 7 and when I asked them to try updating Windows they had the same problem I had.  The settings in Windows Update varied from ‘Download updates but let me choose when to install them’ ,  ‘Install updates automatically ( recommended)’, ‘Never check for updates ( not recommended)’ .  Ironically, the only PC I found I could check for updates was the one set to ‘Never check for updates ( not recommended)’. So we changed the settings on all the PC’s to‘Never check for updates ( not recommended)’ and then rebooted & then tried to check for updates and we could in all instances.**  We then changed the settings back to our preference of either *‘Install updates automatically ( recommended)’*or ‘Download updates but let me choose when to install them’ and all is well again. So, it looks as though there has been a common problem with a previous Windows 7 Update that caused this update problem recently.  

Can anyone from Microsoft please look in to this as there may be many people thinking their PC's are being updated and they aren't!

Since posting this a year ago it's obvious from the responses that the above fix doesn't work for everyone but it's certainly worth giving the above solution a shot as it's so simple, if it doesn't then follow one of the other solutions mentioned further on in the discussion.  Once you have the updates working again the problem does not reoccur so obviously Microsoft fixed the problem in a subsequent update. I also notice that one year on and some people are still only just discovering Windows has not been updating all this time, so guess it pays to check updates are being installed occasionally!

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-02-18T12:35:09+00:00

    The solution that worked for me was much simpler- in short I ran the Windows Update 'Troubleshooter'. There's a Microsoft helppage about Windows Update here which should guide everyone through most problems: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/10164/fix-windows-update-errors

    However it was Microsofts' virtual agent https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/contact/virtual-agent/  which first pointed me to the 'Troubleshooter'.

    In fact I downloaded the recommended troubleshooter and ran it and it found and solved two configuration issues,  but the problem still seemed to be there, and then I ran the already installed Windows Update Troubleshooter that can be found under 'Control Panel>Troubleshooting'. I may also have re-booted perhaps between running both but I can't remember.

    My Win7 machine hadn't updated for 14 months and now all 'Important' updates are fully up-to-date- however it may be best to just install Important updates first instead of doing most of them all in one go as I did. Hope this helps!

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-10-09T14:14:08+00:00

    Many thanks for your help on this. I only realised a short time ago that no updates had taken place and had the problems hitherto described. I couldn't even see when the last update took place. Anyway after a good while installing a pretty massive update I found that it had been a year ago since the last one so all is sweet again..  for now now

    Cheers

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-10-03T19:01:39+00:00

    I was just having this exact same problem on a client's laptop that is running very poorly. I decided to tackle the updates not working first.

    I ran the update troubleshooter, which said it fixed two problems but I still would not update with a the same error. I tried shutting the update service off and back on again, I tired deleting the old update cache, but what finally got it working was just putting it back on auto update after shutting them off and it immediately started checking for updates again.

    Anyone having this issue, a simple check is to disable auto updates, let it fail to do a manual update again, and then re-enable auto updates. Seemed to work for me. If not, start going through all the other solutions and see if one works.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-09-12T10:00:07+00:00

    Open sevices

    Scroll down to Windows update 

    Click on Windows Update

    Click on stop

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  5. Anonymous
    2017-12-16T16:18:15+00:00

    Were those updates easy to find?

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