Cannot change Windows 7 Updates options

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After reading the AskWoody Alert I took a look at the update setting in my Win 7 Pro x64 laptop. I clicked on the Flag icon, selected “Change Settings” then “Let me choose”. Tried to change to Never. The update window went blank, with an hour-glass. I shut down Win Update with Task Manager. Tried again, same result. Re-booted. Now the flag icon was gone, so I started Windows Update from Control Panel. Now I got:

“Windows Update cannot currently check for updates because the service is not currently running. You may need to restart your computer.” There is an OK button, but that just closes the message.

So now I don’t know if this laptop will attempt to install anything or not.

Any suggestions—short of get Win 10!

Thanks.

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Try going to Control Panel\Windows Update
Click on the “Change settings” link in the upper left.
Can you change the settings there?

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Open a Command Prompt window (you can either search for CMD, or go to Run [Windows key+R] and type CMD) and enter the following:
sc query wuauserv
That will tell you if the service is running or stopped. It sounds like it’s stopped; if it is, type:
net start wuauserv
to start the Windows Update service again.

Once it’s started again, you should be able to check for updates.

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Have you used any third-party Update blocking software?

2 users thanked author for this post.

satrow, abbodi86

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Rhino wrote:

Any suggestions—short of get Win 10!

I wonder. As Windows 7 is EOL and will get only Defender updates, what updates do you expect to get ?
Unless you enroll for ESU or pay for 0Patch or manually download Fab. ‘Black Screen’ patch from Microsoft’s catalog, you won’t get any.

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Check the Group Policy settings in Windows 7. Here’s how:

In Windows 7, type the command MMC. At the top of the menu, right click on MMC and choose Run as Administrator. Enter the password of an administrator account if asked.

File / Add/remove snap-in…

Select Group Policy Object Editor from the list of available snap-ins, and then click the Add button to the right of the list. Then click Finish in the popup window. Click OK when back in the Add or Remove Snap-ins window.

In the left panel, drill down as follows:
Console Root
Local Computer Policy
Computer Configuration
Administrative Templates
Windows Components
Windows Update

You can now set some update options by double clicking on a desired option. For example:
Configure Automatic Updates — Disable (if you don’t want auto updates to run) or Enable (if you want them to run). Then click Next Setting if you want auto-updates to run.
On the next screen, you can specify how and when you want auto-updates to run.

If you want to turn off auto sleep and auto hibernate, drill down as follows:
Console Root
Local Computer Policy
Computer Configuration
Administrative Templates
System
Power Management
Sleep Settings.
Set all of the system timeout options to zero, in order to disable auto sleep and auto hibernate. Or pick only the ones you want.

If you leave something set to Not Configured, then you can control it the normal way in Windows. If you set it here in Group Policy Editor, it will override the normal Windows settings.

Group Policy Editor is a good place to look if you can’t seem to get Windows configured the way you want; there may be a setting in Group Policy that is overriding your effort to set something in Windows the normal way.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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