Hello all,

My Dell e6500 recently contracted a PUP and I decided that the best thing was to do a totally new installation of Windows 7 on it.

The problem is that now it doesn't want to update Windows. It tells me that it is looking for updates but does nothing beyond that. I'm not sure what is going on here. Do I need to go into Windows and verify the Product Key? Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

A PUP is not a reason, to reinstall. That's overkill. Do you see an error message after it searches for updates? Have you enabled updates in the control panel or did you try it manually?

 

I agree a PUP is definitely not a reason to re-install Windows but you have already done it so now you need to fix the update problem. Usually by default Windows is set to look for updates automatically unless you turn automatic updates off. What probably happened during the re-install of Windows is the update service was not correctly installed. Use your search engine and look for a Microsoft Fix It for the Updater and then go to the Microsoft website and download the fix it and that should take care of your problem.

I have had this same problem several times when I have refurbished or re-installed Windows myself due to a very bad virus or trojan attack I otherwise couldn't get rid of with my anti-virus. Nine times out of ten the fix it works and you can continue your updates but there are other things you can do when the update service doesn't work that Microsoft explains. I have also had to fix the update service after a bad update so bookmark what you find as you might need it again.

 

Win 7's slow update is for many a long standing PITA (count me in). Here's a somewhat recent article from InfoWorld.

 

Good article! Love this line:

hahahahahaha!!!

(I gave up on W7 updates. Used to be in times gone by it was plug-and-pray. I think now it's patch-and-pray.)

 

You are not alone, I just went through this again. I have factory reset several win7 computers this year and all have had update issues. Most of the time it use a unbelievable amount of system resources (CPU running at 100%) and high memory usage and slows the PC down to a crawl. The last one I did had Service pack 1 installed after the factory reset and it took me 2 weeks just to get updates working. I tried just about every fix I could find. All of a sudden it started updating on it's own

 

Looks like this is a losing proposition. I followed the link given by This Old Man and tried to do the workaround. I set up the laptop to 'never shut down' and after more than 48 hours of it showing 'Waiting for available socket' I gave up and shut it down.