Windows update refuses to work

Some time back, the Aspire 5738 hard drive failed, no recovery options existed. A new 500gb WD drive was put in, which was 7200 rpm vs 5400.. and 32 mb cache vs 8 mb. A licensed Windowns 7 Home Premium was put in with a fresh install. Drivers were put in from the support driver download page (although a few of them refused to run saying they were not compatable with the system, which was very weird) and windows was verified and registered with Microsoft.

Nothing else was added, software wise. Then Windows update was run. It would sit there for 12 to 24 hours, and not make any progress.

Various combinations of "fixes" were tried... the usual packages that seem to be available, and nothing worked. Fearing that perhaps some of these fixes messed things up, several more fresh installs were done, with the drive being formatted for each one. Nothing has worked.

In frustration, I have now put in Windows 7 Pro x64 SP1... 3 times now... sitting with my 4th time as we speak. These installs were all done with the MSDN files direct from Microsoft. Valid license keys assigned to me were used in all cases. This issue has been going on for 7 days now, and I am getting most frustrated. So is my customer/client/friend that I am doing this for.

I've seen the odd forum post about problems with the Acer drivers that may cause issues... so I am here asking...

I now have a new fresh install done of the above. I have not connected to the internet (all past connections were via LAN not wifi) yet. In the past, I have even run the WU troubleshooting from within Windows control panel, even selecting to get the "latest version" from MS. I get no where.

What I can say is... previous installs of Pro, when WU has been run.... MS has said that when I run WU, that I need a newer version, which it downloads, installs, and then re-runs WU again... 24 hours pass, and nothing. Just the spinner that says "checking for updates".

Should I be putting in ANY of the Acer drivers before doing this? Device manager shows no issues with the basic windows drivers. And attempts in the past to install and run the Acer Update have NEVER shown that there are newer drivers. Which is a joke really... but...

So, before I connect to the net, what exactly should my next attempt be? Put in any drivers? Just run WU as it sits? What specific fixits should I be running before hand?

As a side note, services show both BITS and WU to be delayed started and running. Power plan has been set for no HD shutdown on AC power, no sleep, no hibernate. Screen saver kicks in after 5 minutes, display never turns off.

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billsey

Do you see anything in Windowsupdate.log? Typically a hung update either means it's trying to connect to the Microsoft servers and not getting any response or it's trying to connect to a local update server with the same results. The latter typically happens when you are joined to a domain, so unlikely in this case. I assume you can connect to the internet fine? You have done the Activation via the internet with Microsoft?

IT_Dev

Everything I have checked in logs, has shown no errors. I even checked the CBR ?? log (or is that CRB.. whatever) and there were no entries that started with "Error"... many entries had errors flagged farther on in the text, mostly dealing with stuff for AMD things, which would make sense because this is an Intel machine. I checked Event Viewer, and other than the usual standard "sql error with CIM32" (or whatever it is... I dont have the machine anymore) there was nothing.

Another windows IT person supplied an Ultimate image, with 215 windows updates already installed, which Windows properly installed at the end of the basic installation package, and again WU refused to get anything. "Looking for updates" went on for close to 24 hours. Every install of Windows, 3 different versions, was always with a 64 bit SP1 iso file. Every install was done on a formatted hard drive, fresh as fresh can be.

Prior to putting in Ultimate, and working with Pro... the first thing I did after the fresh install was to put in Acer Update. It said there were no updates to put in. Which was pathetic because these were all the standard default windows drivers. But I ran WU and got nothing after 24 hours. So I used a portable version of a driver utility I have, ran it... and installed 22 driver updates (video, lan, wireless, audio, motherboard), rebooting as required. When that was done, WU was ran again... and nothing. Using the troubleshooter from the control panel, the latest "fixit" was installed automatically, and ran... "diagnosing windows problems... checking for updates".. Nothing.

The same routine was done with the Ultimate install as well... no drivers added... WU ran.. nothing. Rebooted, put in updated drivers (not from Acer Update because that never ever worked) and.. same thing.

35 years of working on systems, this is the first time ever, that I have not been able to solve a problem. I have since returned the laptop to my customer/friend.. He is running Ultimate with the pre-installed 215 updates as of March 2016... Knowing he will probably never get any other updates. He is not happy, I am not happy.

Internet connections are via LAN, very high speed service. Everything else works, network wise. Never any errors showing in Device Manager. Everything possible to be tried, has been tried. I have given up. If someone thinks they have a solution, I'll go over to his place and try it, as long as its something I haven't tried before.

billsey

The 'AMD' thing with errors isn't an AMD vs Intel thing, it's a 64bit vs 32bit thing. They call 32bit x86 and 64bit amd64. A legacy from the first 64bit Intel compatible processors, which were made by AMD. Sorry I can't help more, if I had it on hand and couldn't find anything in the logs I'd start sniffinf the ethernet to see what it is actually trying to do, or perhaps using ProcessExplorer to see what the update process is doing. Manually downloading and installing updates would be a real pain...

TimeRunner

I am having the same problem. I have two Acer Aspire laptops with WIndows 7. One has barely been used, I just bought it as a backup because I prefer Windows 7 to Windows 10. My older Aspire needed a housecleaning so I used the e-management program to restore it to factory defaults. I checked for updates and it found 156 of them. So far so good (this was about a week ago). It downloaded and installed 86 of them then it refused to download any more of them. I got my almost new backup aspire out and it had 8 updates ready to be downloaded. It wouldn't download them. I tried everything I could find by Googling Windows 7 updates. Nothing worked. Out of frustration, I restored BOTH laptops to factory defauts, using e-management recovery. Now they will "check for updates" for days and find nothing. I'm out of ideas. I've spent hours on Google and nothing works. I really like WIndodws 7 and do not want to give in to Microsoft and buy a WIndows 10. Does anyone have any ideas? I use anti-virus software but, without the security updates, I'm afraid they're both going to be overwhelmed with malware.

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