My home built desktop PC uses Windows 7 Home Premium. I recently had a few system crashes with this PC that I discussed on another thread. My PC is back up and running.

Now I can't get windows update to work. It just searches endlessly for updates with the green progress bar running. This is the troubleshooting I have done so far:

Checked PC clock/time/date for correctness
changed windows update settings and rebooted
Set PC to never sleep
Ran SFC Scannow. Didn't detect anything abnormal.
Ran Microsoft fix-it tool. Didn't help
Ran CCleaner to wipe free space and fix registry errors
No viruses or malware detected
Ran windows update standalone installers. Didn't work
Memory and hardware check came back normal
Installed Microsoft Silverlight
Ran windows update diagnostics. It repaired all windows update errors with one exception. It was not able to repair update error 0x80070057

Windows update screen shows I have NEVER installed or checked for updates. But when I click on update history, it shows a ton of updates I installed up to March 15.

I've tried just about everything I can think of

 

So you have all the updates? If there is still a problem try the following from MS:

Have you run the Windows Update troubleshooter?

Open the Windows Update troubleshooter - Microsoft Windows Help

If it doesn't help, do the following steps.

Click Start and type regedit and press the Enter button.

Navigate to HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate

Delete all values with this 0x80070057. Then run the the following fix it tool.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058/en-us

Reboot the computer and verify that the problem has been resolved

 

Sorry I didn't get back to you right away, Would you believe Windows Update started working again just after I posted this? Now I've been playing catch-up all afternoon reloading all the updates.

Maybe the procedures I performed kicked in after a time. Man, this PC has really been working me the last 10 days or so, what with recovering from the system crash and reloading everything I lost.

I need to get a back-up drive really soon so I don't have go through this again.

 

At least it's working. That's what counts.

 

That procedure you listed above with regedit is good to know. I'm going to save that one. Thanks

 

Ok, good luck___________________________

 

Desktop PC performing well now