My normal mode of installing updates has always been to have windows notify me and then to go in and manually do this. This has never been a problem previously. I regularly keep windows defender and other updates managed this way on a daily basis. These are often just windows defenders updates.
I openened windows defender and updated. Then I opened windows update to see if there was anything remaining. Instead of coming up 'clean' and saying nothing else was available typical behavior unless a large update of security fixes is there , it just got stuck on checking updates. I rebooted. Same thing happened, it got stuck on checking updates. I am familiar with windows update getting stuck, so I first ran a full virus check, two separate checks. They both came back clean. Then I ran the troubleshooter.
No problems found. I tried a recovery moving back in time about 10 days. The recovery did not fix windows update. Then I worked with sfc and dism until these problems were fixed. Then I did further searches and ended up running sfc scan and dism. A problem surfaced with these showing 3 corrupted files.
All of this work clobbered the data in 'view updates history' but things still showed in 'installed updates. Update still failed. I rebooted and rebooted, ran and reran sfc and dism and the troubleshooter for what seemed like hours on Wednesday while ordering an external hard drive to prep for the worst.
At one point that evening, the troubleshooter seemed to magically 'take'. I thought my problems were solved. All seemed well. I went into windows update to run it even though I was not prompted to do so. Windows update got stuck on 'checking for updates' again. I backed up all my data and prepared to do a reset of my computer if needed, as it was mentioned as the worst case fix for this problem. This did not fix the problem because it just removed applications and saved my system settings.
It showed information from the prior days efforts since removing my updates history! Update failed again. So I made absolutely certain that I got a complete reset, just out of the box. I went through the entire set up process. The windows defender updates are NOT listed. Any attempt to run windows update is met with failure; it just gets stuck on 'checking for updates'.
If I use the troubleshooter it says 'no updates available. So about now I have no idea what to do next. It won't work, and now windows defender doesn't want to update. You have not selected any file s to download. A download manager is recommended for downloading multiple files. Would you like to install the Microsoft Download Manager? Generally, a download manager enables downloading of large files or multiples files in one session. Many web browsers, such as Internet Explorer 9, include a download manager.
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