On one of my systems, Win7 Professional, Update has decided to just sit there looking for updates for hours... (more than 12)

I tried riunning the Windows update troubleshooter that the Microsoft search pointed me at, and it then just hung at "Gathering data - this may take several minutes" for over an hour. I then checked the webpage I loaded it from, and the path mentioned Win 10... This S/W doesn't even check if it is on the correct OS version!!!!

I then ran the correct Update troubleshooter for Win 7, 8 & 8.1, that seems better, until it finished daying it had fixed 3 issues, but not the 0x80070057 error.

Internet searches seem to finish on "download my fix-everything toolkit & I'll charge you, or a vast sequence of very low-level commands turning off a lot of services, regedits, running (and installing) various packages from M$, then starting it all again, and the comments seem to say even then YMMV!!!!


Has anyone got a reliable way of fixing this, or is it back to reinstall??

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Happy Crunching,

Graham

There is no single fix, the one that appears to be the most effective most often is Updating the Windows Update Service. For systems that haven't been updated regularly the Convenience Rollup can help.
The final option is the WSUS Offline Update.
There other things you can do that may or may not help, and sometimes do & often don't- all depending on what the actual problem is.

The issue tends to occur most on systems with limited RAM, and lots of updates to be done. Then there are those times it occurs on systems with plenty of RAM and not many updates- just to make life interesting.
Usually just leaving it overnight (or 2) and eventually it will find the updates & download them.
Of course the entire time this is happening Windows Update will be using about 50% of your CPU time.

How-To Geek, and sorting out Windows update.
You can try the first few suggestions & see if they do or don't work, but generally it comes down to the Update the Windows Update Service & the following options.

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Grant
Darwin NT

On one of my systems, Win7 Professional, Update has decided to just sit there looking for updates for hours... (more than 12)

Sometimes, if you have many updates in queue, the % download counter does not move and everything seems to stand still and stuck.
But it may be a wrong impression. The counter does not update, but downloads are happening all the same. Only the counter does not witness it.
With some patience (sometimes A LOT of patience) all of a sudden updates begin to install and everything goes to normal operation.

It happened to me. After many aborts and googleing. Then the successful advice was patience.
And it worked.

To check if you are in this condition, just go into C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download and check if you have very recent downloads (there may be still some old relics of past updates). If so, just let it go and wait.
Otherwise,... I don't know! :-)

But this was my "lucky" shot and I wanted to share it with you.

Happy crunching!

Sleepy

P.S.- PC Just crashed and trashed some 33 WUs to the realm of lost tasks. :-(

And this then? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/947821

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_________________________________________________________________________
Addicted to SETI crunching!
Founder of GPU Users Group

For the problem of taking forever to search for updates.. I've been a bit leery about updates to the Update Client, since there were reports on various sites that new update clients tended to download all the "upgrade to win 10 now!" stuff in the background without telling you it was doing so, nor asking for permission.

But this update: KB 3102810 fixes that "taking forever" symptom. I've used it on two machines to get them updated properly and it seems to do its job from what I can tell, and I haven't seen any evidence of shadiness so far.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

On my main win7 dev host, and the loungeroom PC, I had at one point intentionally broken Windows update due to the wheel spinning going on through the getWinx and telemetry injection cycle. (I was prepared if vulnerability became an issue, having NAT router, AVs and an IDS running).

After getwin10 and telemetry blocking became an option, I 'fixed' the broken Windows update with one of the update rollups, have been able to update while not been bothered by getwin10 (before the cuttoff or since), and checking the telemetry stuff so far settings seem to have not been overridden.

Don't recall if there were extra hoops I had to jump through for the getting windows update running again part, though assuming the wheel spinning symptom had the same source, then the update rollup and other updates seemed to get by that.

[Edit:] Just recalled an issue I had with the standalone KB windows update installers ---> Had to disable the Windows update service before they would get past their initial 'Searching for updates on this computer' stage. After that they installed fine.

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

I have just been having the exact same problem. Windows 7 checking for the updates takes forever (nothing in 12 hours) and one instance of svchost.exe taking a full CPU constantly. Running the Troubleshooting from Control Panel as suggested didn't result to anything as it gets stuck in the same situtation when it is checking for the updates on the net.

Then I tried the Cosmic_Ocean's suggestion of KB3102810 but no help. I had this already installed but uninstalling and reinstalling it didn't change help.

But then I found this http://www.ghacks.net/2016/11/02/checking-for-updates-slow-on-windows-7-here-is-the-fix/ and I installed the July 2016 update rollup which fixed my problem.

The manual installation of Microsoft updates was also stuck when it checks the updates available on my computer. The trick was to reboot the computer and immediately on restart manually install the update before normal windows update was started (before the svchost.exe hogs the CPU).

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The trick was to reboot the computer and immediately on restart manually install the update before normal windows update was started (before the svchost.exe hogs the CPU).

Or kill the Windows Update service process (wuauserv).

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Grant
Darwin NT

^ That could also do the trick. I tried killing the wuaueng.dll thread (which is consuming all the cpu time) inside svchost.exe using Sysinternals Process Explorer as an administrator but that didn't let the manual update installation proceed.

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I tried killing the wuaueng.dll thread (which is consuming all the cpu time) inside svchost.exe using Sysinternals Process Explorer as an administrator...

Usually that's all it takes.
If it had started to download/install the updates then you'd have other processes running which would probably get upset/confused with the killing of wuaueng.dll


EDIT- I seem to recall in several of the fixes to disable Windows update and an other associated function, do the patch(s), then re-enable Windows Update again.

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Grant
Darwin NT

I have the same problem, but on Windows 8.1. I assume the fixes for win7 won't work on 8.1. Am I wrong? Any pointers on fixing this in Win 8.1?

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The Universe is not only stranger than you imagine, it's stranger than you can imagine.

SETI@home classic workunits 1,405 CPU time 57,318 hours

You can give KB 3102312 a try first, and if that doesn't fix the long wait times, then maybe follow the other user's path and go with the July 2016 rollup for 8.1.

After doing either one, pull up task manager > services > scroll down to wuauserv and tell it to stop.

From here, you can either try to just start it again and pull up the control panel interface for it and tell it to check for updates, OR... you can go the more hands-on route and go to c:\windows\softwaredistribution and empty the folder out, then start the service back up and tell it to check for updates. That will make it start completely over with checking for updates, but it will take a little longer than normal, since it has to check the versions of all the files on the system to see if older updates have already been applied now that it has no knowledge of update history.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

"upgrade to win 10 now!" stuff in the background without telling you it was doing so, nor asking for permission.

I eventually updated my remaining win7 PCs to 10 before the 1 yr 'free' upgrade expired this past summer (not wanting to PAY for the dumb thing, nor wanting to be stuck down the road with an unsupported OS, as was the case with XP).
I detest win10, however. MS is becoming more and more of a control freak. In 10, the user - the OWNER of the PC, for heaven's sake - has very, very limited control over further win updates, their timing, anything.
E.g., I leave all my PCs running (DC projects, of course!) 24/7, and do not want to be surprised by an 'unannounced' reboot forced upon me.
Win10 allows at max 12 hours per day (in update settings) that you can declare for your PC to be 'active hours' even tho my PCs are active 24/7.
I know updating is very important, but MS is disgustingly tyrannical in giving the PC OWNER essentially no options.

For Win 7 users - I'd suggest staying with win 7 -- or go to Linux.
In updates, ALWAYS click on the optional updates and UNCHECK the Win 10 update -- MS has it always checked to download by default!

As a Win 10 user, I am seriously contemplating going to dual boot with Linux. In the meantime, I generally leave each PC disconnected from my Wi-Fi. (I leave a couple of day's extra WUs in 'inventory'.) It's a pain in the rear, but at least I probably will not have a 'surprise!' reboot pulled on me.

LLP, PhD PE

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God is love - Jesus proves it.

I think, therefore I think I am ... Yahweh is Love, therefore we are.

Jesus is the Lord of all creation, He is the alpha and the omega, the First and the Last.

God said, 'let there be' and BANG, it came to be!

...
For Win 7 users - I'd suggest staying with win 7 -...

Some of us worked that out quite some time ago now (most during Win10 pre testing) and Win7 still good until 2020 at least. ;-)

And we didn't need to use a ridiculously long user name with bad religious overtones either. :-p

Cheers.

Win7 still good until 2020 at least.

MS does say they will support Win 7 until "Jan 14, 2020"
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853
(That is just over three years from now.)
MS is quite vigorously pushing win 10 ... realizing that they had rather totally missed out on the smart-phone market.
Based on that, I'd say who knows how long MS will actually continue support, particularly if they can cajole most windows PC owners into going to win10.
I don't believe that MS is contractually bound to keep up support as per their stated date.

user name with bad religious overtones

Don't know why you say my user name is 'religious'
It is in the first part philosophical (~ existential).
I am not a solipsist, but it IS true that:
my thinking does not prove my existence to others, and
my thinking is not the source of my being, it is not the origin of my existence.
The second part touches on the science of genetics and embryology.

I have never seen any rules about how long, or short, a username can be or must be.
On the other hand, when composing a post, the Rules do include:

No messages intended to annoy ... or to hijack a thread.
No messages that are deliberately hostile,... or insulting.

Peace, brother

LLP, Ph.D.,
registered Prof. Engineer
IISE 6-sigma certified

_

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God is love - Jesus proves it.

I think, therefore I think I am ... Yahweh is Love, therefore we are.

Jesus is the Lord of all creation, He is the alpha and the omega, the First and the Last.

God said, 'let there be' and BANG, it came to be!

user name with bad religious overtones

Don't know why you say my user name is 'religious'
...
On the other hand, when composing a post, the Rules do include:

No messages intended to annoy ... or to hijack a thread.
No messages that are deliberately hostile,... or insulting.

And you omit what not suits your "proof of innocence":
"No abusive comments involving race, religion, nationality ..."

For me your usernames, signature, Profile are full with religion.
You don't have just one username:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_members.php?teamid=134455

This will annoy anyone that is atheist or have another religion.

The very long username makes the formatting of the web pages "broken":
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_forum.php?id=10

And you try to spread that religion on many projects (of course unsuccessfully, such pushing-in-the-face is just (very) annoying)

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

Many thanks to those who have made cunstructive and useful comments, not to those who try to hijack this to suit their own ends. The issue is now fixed for me.

Moderators, please lock this thread to avoid further flaming in what I intended as a friendly request.

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Happy Crunching,

Graham