updates Windows 7 doesn't install updates - 1 year out of date

[ThomJV]

Sup folks,

(tl;dr: skip to the "-" symbol to skip the introduction)

I've been having some issues with my operating system  (Windows 7, 64bit) not wanting to update. 

I've had this update prompt displaying "You need to restart  your pc to install the latest updates" for quite a while now. Usually I click "restart now" after booting up my computer, and go drink a cup of tea whilst it's updating. Except it wasn't.

-

The popup kept haunting me, and when I recently restarted my pc to update again, I noticed that it just reboots my pc as usual, without updating at all.

I tried to troubleshoot Windows update, but it finds nothing. I deleted all my cache, nothing, updated the Windows Update agent, nothing. I checked my pc using various anti-malware programs (such as MalwareBytes and RemoveAdware), admittedly they did find some PUP's, but even after complete removing all, it still didn't want to update.

Worse still, I didn't just miss a recent update or something, but have apparently not update the system at all for almost an entire year, yikes.

 

I NEED SOME HELP

Dear techies out there, I need advice.

Firstly, is there anything you recommend I'd do that I might not have tried already? Is anyone, or has anyone experienced the same issues?

I'd rather not reinstall the OS entirely, as that will uninstall all my programs (right?), and I don't want to go through that trouble.

 

Now another solution that I've thought of, is to buy a new SSD, reinstall Windows on that, just add the other drives as secondary and third drives. This would be a considerable upgrade anyway, as my current boot-drive is an HDD. However, will that cause any issues when adding my current boot-drive as a secondary drive? Can I still use those installed programs with Windows OS still installed on that drive, or is that impossible/impractical? (I'm a complete lay when it comes to these things)

Any and all advice is very welcome, so please, if you have any ideas, thoughts, or just want to call me a knucklehead for not updating my OS for an entire year, feel free to reply to this topic.

 

Thanks a bunch in advance,

Regards,

TJ

[Delicieuxz]

Mods, please put that information into a forum sticky.

[Nord]

2 minutes ago, ThomJV said:

However, will that cause any issues when adding my current boot-drive as a secondary drive? Can I still use those installed programs with Windows OS still installed on that drive, or is that impossible/impractical?

Well you will have to format your current HDD and start from scratch. There is a chance it would work with 2 OS drives but thats not advisable at all. (Hint for the future: partition your drives and make a partition for windows, so you dont have to format everything)

 

If it would actually work to boot 2 drives that both have windows, the programms installed on the secondary drive or rather your current HDD, will almost exclusively NOT work, because you still have windows on that drive and thats where the registry is written to. Some maybe figure that out and re-write the regestry and such, but most simply wont.

 

 

For your update problem in general, what Delicieuxz posted is probably worth a read.

There are various ways to manually install updates, semi and full manual. Going from searching the number on windows homepage up to just setting the installer & searcher to manual only & killing the allready downloaded files, which are (I belive) in %TEMP%.

Start - run - "sfc /scannow" maybe could fix the problem itself.

Try this: http://plugable.com/2016/06/08/windows-7-wont-update-what-to-do/

And worst case, you could try and see if some torrent sites or such provide update packs or so (carefull, always scan for viruses). You would not do anything illegal in that case, as you do own a legitimate copy of win7 (i assume) and hence are eligable for the update either way, its just from a 3rd party.

 

 

 

 

[ThomJV]

4 hours ago, Nord said:

Going from searching the number on windows homepage up to just setting the installer & searcher to manual only & killing the allready downloaded files, which are (I belive) in %TEMP%.

 

 

 

 

Where exactly in %TEMP%? Or just everything in %TEMP%?

[ThomJV]

4 hours ago, Nord said:

 

 

 

 

I ran "sfc /scannow in the command prompt, but said I needed to restart my pc before running sfc /scannow. I can't exactly remember what it said, but it had something to do with repairs.

I rebooted my pc, appeared to be updating, it wasn't.

Rebooted again, this time it was "preparing to configure Windows", and is now stuck on this screen. Translated that says "Error whilst configuring Windows-updates

Undoing changes

Don't turn off the pc"

Halp?