Windows Update quits checking?

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My Windows 7 Windows Update stopped (or seemed to stop) its daily check for updates.  Aug. 20, 2020 was the last date it shows a successful check. My WU is set on “Check for updates but do not download or install them.”  So I tried manually clicking on “Check for Updates” and got an error message with this error code:  80072EFD.

I’ve got 8 Office 2010 updates waiting on my WU that came in earlier, and will eventually want to download and install them. WU is probably trying to check, but failing every time.  Below are some snips of what I’m seeing.  To my knowledge there’s nothing I’ve done to cause WU to be blocked.

Has anyone else had this happen or possibly know what’s going on?  This is the first time I’ve had any problem with my Win 7 Windows Update in a long time.

 

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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[GLingner]

Hi Charlie,

Out of curiosity have you clicked the link on 8/9/2020 View update history  to see if anything got broken or didn’t update properly?  (This might need a deeper dive)

Also, what anti-virus / firewall are you using?
Your AV might have gotten updated around the 9th and doesn’t know to let windows update.  That happened to me with Avast.

Good luck with that.  Maybe someone who knows more than me will have an answer.

Gary

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by GLingner.

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Charlie

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Yep, looking at the update history was one of the first things I did.  I use Win 7’s firewall and have AVG Free AV which hasn’t had a program update very recently.  I checked the Event Viewer and saw some information messages about Windows Update failing, but nothing that gave me information I could use.  Thanks for the reply.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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Two straws to grasp at here:
1 – One user (seen on a Search on the error code) reported that after a CHKSDK – and some other unspecified changes that he made – the error cleared.
2 – This may be related. Per the latest Servicing Stack update list, for Windows 7, 4570673 is dated August 11. Do you show this as having been installed?

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Charlie

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I’ve done the chkdsk with no change.  I haven’t applied any Service Stack updates since January and have been able to download and install Office 2010 updates up to July, and have the August Office updates waiting in my WU for Susan’s approval.  I’m only interested in the Office updates and there hasn’t been any problems until 8/21/20.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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Not sure where Win 7 updates come from these days, the update catalog ends Dec 2019:

http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=windows+7

Installing servicing stack updates may help, they’re recommended but often not needed unless your update service has been broken, which seems like it might be the case.  They check and repair if necessary, the update mechanism.

Try disabling AVG temporarily; risk is very low for updates, general browsing is somewhat higher if you like to click a lot.  Any info in AVG’s forum?

JMO but I’d use a paid AV,  freebies are data collectors.  AVG is reskinned Avast and Avast is a pernicious data brokering company.  Even their paid products; visit their corporate site, it’s disappointing.

Kaspersky has a utility for completely removing Avast products, otherwise you’ll spend hours going through the registry.

Eset has worked very well with little overhead here.  Only an AV is needed, Internet Suites tend to slow computers, offer redundant features Windows already has and elaborate ones (kaspersky, eset…) can be very confusing.

 

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Charlie

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[EP]

actually most extended support for Windows 7 ended on January 14, 2020 so here are the updates listed on MS Update Catalog for Jan. 2020 (aka. 2020-01) for Windows 7:

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=windows%207%202020-01

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by EP.

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Yes most Windows 7 updates ended 1/14/20 but I have still been getting the Office 2010 monthly updates.  I have them installed up to JULY, with the AUGUST updates in my WU waiting.

What I’m trying to figure out how to do is fix my Win 7 Windows Update if that’s possible.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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Disabled my Antivirus and it didn’t make any difference.  Thanks for the advice though.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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@Charlie, Office 2010 is due to receive no more support after October 13th 2020
You could image your system, then install the latest SSU from the catalog.?

FYI: Woody just fixed his old Win7 VM as his WU wasn’t working either over here

Win8.1/R2 Hybrid lives on..

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Charlie

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Woody installed 2019-03 Servicing Stack Update KB 4490628, which is a prerequisite along with the SHA-2 KB4474419 for using Windows Update.

Check #2290579.

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Charlie

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I have both Service Stacks 4474419 and 4490628 installed.  I do not have the latest SS 4570673.  I tried to download 4570673 from the MS Update Catalog and got an Error Message that I couldn’t connect with Microsoft.  Of course it was Firefox trying to connect so maybe . . . no I’ve gotten loads of S.O. & S.S. updates from the catalog using Firefox.  This really has me baffled.  I’ll look at what Woody did again, maybe I missed something.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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Are you using a MS blocking app either for telelmetry or updates. Are the MS sites in the message above blocked in your Hosts file, by a script you are using, in your browser ad-ons, or in your Firewall? It sounds to me you have MS blocked somehow if you cannot connect to and download from the MS Catalog.

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I have had uBlock Origin for some time now and never had any problem. I’m on Firefox 79 which shouldn’t make any difference.  To my knowledge I don’t have anything pertaining to MS blocked or hindered in any way. Checked the firewall and antivirus.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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[Charlie]

Forgot to mention that my Internet Explorer 11 has been locked down tight for a long time and never caused any problem in high security mode.  Have the same Telemetry blocked that has been recommended to block for quite awhile too.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Charlie.

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My Win7 machine running Office 2010 is getting  Aug updates for Office 2010 and I can connect to the Catalog with Firefox (latest update). Ask yourself what you have changed since you got the last updates in July.

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Charlie

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You’re saying you can’t get to https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=4570673? I had no difficulties. Perhaps you hit some kind of a transient glitch.

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Charlie

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Yes I can get on to the catalog, it’s when I try to download something that I get a Not Able To Connect page.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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[Charlie]

Tried using IE 11 to access the MS Catalog, tried using the fix, nothing seems to work.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Charlie.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Charlie.

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https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Home.aspx

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Tried that already, experimenting to see if I could get latest SS 4570673, here’s the result –

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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[Charlie]

Okay, I’m on my Linux laptop now and I went to the MS Update Catalog and downloaded Service Stack KB4570673 – No problem at all.  I wonder if I should try to install it on my Win 7 machine.  I’m not paying for or getting Extended Service Updates, so should I try it and hope I don’t ruin my Win 7?

This sure is the craziest thing that’s happened in a long time!

Edit:  Maybe I could get my Office updates the same way, and install them manually?

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Charlie.

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You can’t hurt anything. If it doesn’t install, what have you lost?

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Charlie

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Thanks so much for your help PKCano.  I’ll give the Service Stack a try and see what happens before I do anything else.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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Well, I installed the KB4570673 SSU and there was no change even after rebooting (which it didn’t call for but I did anyway).  Next thing on the list to try is my “back up internal hard drive” which is the original drive that came with my Win 7 computer that I keep up to date as a plug-in backup.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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Have you tried this?

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista/windows-update-error-80072efd/398546d2-6b6d-47a0-b075-82d815fa9a8f

 

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Charlie

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Thank you GoneToPlaid!  It looks like you provided the answer/fix.  I followed these instructions contained in your link –

1. Right-click “Command Prompt” Run as administrator”.

2. Type “netsh winhttp reset proxy” (without quotes) at the command prompt, and press Enter.

3. Try the update again.

and it worked!  Now I just hope that it stays working.  Will have to do this on my other hard drive too.  Thank you very much!

 

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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GoneToPlaid

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I am glad that it worked.

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Gone: Is the extant Proxy setting visible anywhere via GUI, that is, without NETSH … ?
And, how would the Proxy have been set to other than Direct?

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I typed “proxy setting” into search and Internet Properties came up at the Connections Tab when I clicked “configure proxy server” in control panel (showing in the search results).  I have never knowingly set up any proxy, and the connections tab was still unchanged (no proxy set).  I hope this makes some sense since this is not really my strong point.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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I don’t know.

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[Paul T]

Most people don’t set a proxy – it’s a large/complex network thing.
Most likely you had corruption in the network settings and the reset was enough to fix it.

cheers, Paul

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Paul T.

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GoneToPlaid

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Just for the record, I put the other Win 7 Hard drive back in expecting to have to do the same thing to it.  Before doing anything though, I checked out uBlock Origin in Firefox (that had not been updating), clicked on update, and it updated!  Next I checked out the S.O. Update links on this site and the proper things came up for me to download if I wanted to.  Some other sites like GHacks that weren’t getting through came up with no problem.

So I turned the computer off as it was getting late, and this morning I booted it up and left it sit idle for awhile.  I checked Windows Update and it had checked for updates today.  As I said before, this has been a real mystery for me!  Thanks for your help, you guys are great.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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GoneToPlaid

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On my computer, I’ve disabled that checkmark about automatically detecting proxies, just in case, since I know I won’t use an automatic one on this computer ever (as it’s a desktop and only used at home).

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GoneToPlaid

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Here is one thing I use to make Windows Update operations pretty hassle-free:

http://www.SecurityXploded.com – Windows Update Disable [it enables it also]

It takes a little bit getting used to, because the menu you see offers you what choice you can do next, it does not show what choice you have made.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Charlie

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Well, knock on wood, things have been good with no more update problems.  Just reporting in, in case anyone was wondering.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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