Windows – Can’t turn on Microsoft update in Windows 7 x86

windows 7windows update

I have a Windows 7 x86 virtual machine that hadn't been used for a while, and today I did a full Windows Update on it (including getting IE11).

I noticed that I hadn't turned on Microsoft Updates, and when I open Windows Update and clicked on the "Get Updates for other Microsoft products. Find out More" link, Internet Explored starts up and takes me first to:

http://www.update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/ …. (and something I didn't catch)

Which immediately redirects to

http://www.update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/v6/thanks.aspx?ln=en&&thankspage=5

Which seems to only contain this image:

enter image description here

This page is not what I was expecting (Microsoft update license etc) and simply shows me how to click on the start menu and run Windows Update.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? And how do I actually get Microsoft Updates turned on? This has never been an issue for me in the past.

Note that Windows Update is running perfectly happily on this machine.

Best Answer

OK .. I now have justification for bashing my head on the table.

I discovered another website that was not working with my VM - but I had a second VM for which it did work. In the VM that worked I had IE9, but in the VM that doesn't work I have IE11. That lead me to remembering that there had been "recent" changes in IE, and then adding that website to the IE11 "Compatibility" mode. After which it worked.

So … I added microsoft.com to the IE11 compatibility mode and all of a sudden I see what I expected:

enter image description here

Which finally led to the following (which looks very similar to the initial page I was seeing)

enter image description here

So the problem is that IE11 can't handle a Microsoft website. Oh the irony.

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