Hello!

Brand new laptop with Vista Home Premium.

Started fine, went thru set up.

Windows Update worked fine, updated everything till it came back NO UPDATE FOUNDS.

Installed Office 2007.

Went to Windows Update. It showed 15 new updates needed. Clicked INSTALL NOW... the window stopped responding, nothing happened.

The update icon in the tray showed 1% but never advanced.

The only way to get rid of the WINDOWS UPDATE was thru TASK MANAGER.

Now when I try it (re booted too) the WINDOWS UPDATE window opens but is is transparent, I can see thw wallpaper behind it, and can't get it to work at all. TASK MANAGER is the only way to get rid of it. Also when I use TASK MANAGER to stop the process, I get an EXPLORER STOPPED WORKING message, then it says it is restarting EXPLORER, and everything is fine after that (well, except Windows Update).

I can web surf, message, use Office, etc. No other issues with lap top. But WINDOWS UPDATE is hosed, freezes/hangs every time now.

Any ideas?

I hope someone responds with an answer. I've got the same problem on my laptop.

JT

Yes! They did. Contacted by tech support:

Step 1.Verify Windows Update services

=============================

1. Click the "Start" Button, in the "Start Search" bar, type: "services.msc" (without quotes) and press Enter. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

2. Double click the service "Windows Update".

3. Click on the "General" tab; make sure the "Startup Type" is "Automatic" or "Manual". Then please click the "Start" button under "Service Status" to start the service.

4. Please repeat the above steps with the "Background Intelligent Transfer Service" service.

You can also temporarily stop these services, restart the computer, and then start these services again. If any service is missing or cannot be stopped or restarted, please let me know.

Step 2.Rename WU temporary folders

=============================

1. Click "Start", in "Start Search" item, type: "notepad" (without quotes) and press Enter.

2. Copy the following commands and then paste them into the opened Notepad window:

net stop wuauserv

net stop Cryptsvc

cd /d %windir%\SoftwareDistribution

rd /s /q DataStore

ren %windir%\system32\catroot2 catroot2.old

net start wuauserv

net start Cryptsvc

3. After pasting the above commands, please close the Notepad window. Choose "Save" when you are prompted to save the file. Type "register.bat" as the file name and choose "Desktop" from the left panel as the location.

4. Refer to the Desktop and right click the register.bat file, then choose "Run as administrator".

5. You will see a DOS-like window processing.

After that, please check if updates can be installed correctly.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I ended up running that batch thing a few times. Then when running Windows update, DE SELECT everything and pick one update. It installed fine, then repeated for every other update, one at a time. Now everything works as normal, all good.

• Proposed as answer by bseddon Saturday, December 22, 2012 1:29 PM

Good to hear you got it working.

I generally did the same thing to get it to work. I had found some info which pointed me in a similar direction.

I had to:

1. Set the Services "Background Intelligent Transfer Service" and "Windows Update"to Disabled.

2. Restart the computer.

3. Renamed C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution to SoftwareDistribution-Old.

4. Restart the computer.

5. Set the "Background Intelligent Transfer Service" to Automatic and "Windows Update" service to Automatic (Delayed).

6. Start the BITS and WU services.

7. Opened the Windows Update and configured it to Automatic download and install of all updates (including non-critical).

Lo and behold, it worked. That was a waste of a couple hours today screwing around with that.

Thanks,

JT

• Proposed as answer by matt7890 Friday, November 26, 2010 5:46 PM
• Marked as answer by Carey FrischMVP, Moderator Saturday, February 26, 2011 11:24 AM

jesriv,

Thank you for this info. I was so excited when I read your post. Although that I wished that it worked for me. My BITS gets an error 193:0xc1 when I select start. It starts, then it throws up that error. Been conducting searches regarding this, but am not having a lot of success. My alternative is to bring my computer back to factory defaults. I am running Vista Ultimate.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

NJ

Hi,

I am running Vista Home Premium 32 bit, suddenly the windows update has stopped working. I have followed the standard instructions providedbut the Background Intelligent Transfer Service does not start even manually it just throws up Error 193:0xc1. Windows Update appears to be functioning it shows the status as started so I am assuming that the BITS is the issue.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated I have been hunting for days on line to try to figure this one out.

thanks

Michele

Jesriv

Hey man I don't know what the freakin deal is with my windows update but i'm telling you man it is freakin messed up. So I get the same thing when I click windows update. The screen comes up but that's it. It freezes and won't respond once the window is up and I have to used task manager to get rid of it.

So I followed steps 1-2 no problem and I can get halfway through step 3 but here is where the issue is for me. For some reason I can change the start-up type from automatic to manual and all that good stuff but there is no option for me to click start under "service status" the only thing I can click is stop. So I figured what the heck I'll try it, yea man it looks like its going to work get's halfway through with stopping it and it slows down drastically and I get an error message I think its 1308. But anywho it just says that the task could not be completed and so forth.

And yes I did try restarting my computer. I really don't know what the deal is here. The only programs that I have running and even have stopped running just to make sure are Zonealarm and AVG. I believe this windows update thing is also the reason for why I can't update my windows defender. It has an exclamation point down there telling me I need to update but when I try it just sits there.

So I don't know man I'm completely blown away on this one. If you could help me out that would be great...

Thanks,

Ben

wow my computer does THE EXACT same thing. windows update freezes, windows update to change settings freezes, cant update windows defender cause it wont connect. . . i dont know what the deal is :[

Hey,

I did not return my computerto factory defaults. After spending some time with a rep from Dell,he stated that they have been getting a lot of calls with the same issue. They believe it has to be with Microsoft and told me to wait a month or so. Hopefully it will be fixed by then. So, from time to time I continue to see if I get to download Update. Dell recommended me to not have auto update on for now.

Have not heard of any other fix for now.

-NJ

This is great!  It worked perfectly for me as described in jesriv post.
Thanks!

Good to hear you got it working.

 

 

 

I generally did the same thing to get it to work.  I had found some info which pointed me in a similar direction.

 

I had to:

1. Set the Services "Background Intelligent Transfer Service" and "Windows Update" to Disabled.

2. Restart the computer.

3. Renamed C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution to SoftwareDistribution-Old.

4. Restart the computer.

5. Set the "Background Intelligent Transfer Service" to Automatic and "Windows Update" service to Automatic (Delayed).

6. Start the BITS and WU services.

7. Opened the Windows Update and configured it to Automatic download and install of all updates (including non-critical).

 

Lo and behold, it worked.  That was a waste of a couple hours today screwing around with that.

 

Thanks,

 

JT

That was a great fix, it worked wonders for me. Thanks for that

Jesriv, this also worked for me. Thank you very, very much.

Other errors that I saw while troubleshooting (for people searching)

"Run a DLL as an App" (when using automatic updates)

Error # 0x8024001E (when trying to use the Windows/Microsoft Update site... eventually)

FYI - this fix did NOT work for me (running Windows Server 2008 R2 x64).  No matter how many times I tried to reset Windows Update (also by resetting the registry settings), it would hang when downloading.  I've been messing with this for weeks now and finally found a solution that works for me:

I was able to get it working by manually installing SP1, which, of course, worked only after downloading and running the "Windows Update Readiness Tool", which loaded a Windows Update Standalone install of a Hotfix (KB947821)- thank goodness the standalone Windows Update instance was able to run correctly just long enough to install the Hotfix (I had to reset the SoftwareDistribution folder one more time before I got it to work).

After that, I installed Service Pack 1 manually by downloading and running the x64 EXE version.

FINALLY Windows Update is working again!!!!!!!!

Thank you for your fix JTitge, I had been looking around the net for hours before coming across your answer.  It's slightly worrying to see so many wrong answers out there and many of them after MS technical help have been involved.

Thank you so much for the only correct and useful advice on the internet.  

I have spent hours (days) trying to fix a very similar problem for a friend.  I suspect it was initially caused by impatient switching off of the laptop during config/installation at closedown several months ago, so there were 61 outstanding updates.  I had the same Windows update 'freeze' problems, downloads stuck at 0%, config updates that never finished, etc etc.  I couldn't switch off automatic update via 'change settings' as WU froze.  There seemed to also be some sort of permissions problem, but I got around those by updating directory names in safe mode, and by using your excellent instructions (also in safe mode) to first disable BITS and WU, then to set them to Manual. 

This laptop was also hamstrung by having Rapport Service using CPU to 100% all the time, and RebateInformer seems to have had a similar affect. I found instructions for stopping Rapport on the Trusteer website - you really have to do this or you get nowhere.   

 

I have done the outstanding updates in batches of about 7 - and with just 12 to go everything is looking good.  Thanks again

Perfect.  The Windows Update window 'hung' for me after moving the contents of the system drive to a new device.  Followed these instructions and it worked for me.

I am having a problem similar to what others describe above.  Problem is, when I run services.msc, I don't see Windows Update in the list of services at all.  so, i did not go further.  Hoping for a suggestion here.

You sir, deserve some kind of reward. You also have my gratitude. This technique also works on Windows 8 x64.

For me, neither BITS nor WU would stop in services, nor did a .bat file to rename the software distribution work. Access was denied in all cases, even run as admin. :(

• Edited by Baniita 20 minutes ago