Windows – How to Restart Windows Update Service in Windows 7

serviceswindows 7windows update

I'm running into an issue with Windows Update on Windows 7 Professional. I am totally up to date in Windows Updates as of last week, but discovered this issue [today] during my Sunday morning PC maintenance ritual. In CONTROL PANEL -> SYSTEM & SECURITY -> Windows Update, when I select "Check for Updates", I get a pop-up stating:

"Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer."

I've re-started several times, checked that the service hadn't been disabled at start up, and I've googled extensively on the topic – but have come up with nothing. I know there must be some way to start the service from the cmd line, and I would like to know how to get the service to start at boot.

Please let me know if I have left any details out that may aid in formulating a response. Any of the community's excellent insights would be greatly appreciated!

Best Answer

You can try stopping and restarting Windows Update Service (wuauserv). Open a command line window (run as administrator) and enter the following lines:

net stop wuauserv  
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wups2.dll  
net start wuauserv

If that does not help, try Microsoft's Fix It service to reset your Windows Update Components: How do I reset Windows Update components?

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