Windows Updates stuck in some weird loop

Question

ALL,

I recently had to exchange the hard drive in one of my laptops. The technicians who did this re-installed Windows 7 - system that was on it initially. They did install all updates and put the MS Office back on it.

After that I came back home and installed MSVC 2010 and VLD. Next I check and I saw couple of updates available. So I tried to install them thru the Control Panel. Unfortunately it looks like the updater was stuck trying to install it as there was no movement on the pulsar. I let it sit for about a day and nothing happened. The machine just turned off.

After that I turned machine back on and waited. It picked up the same number of updates it had. So this time I clicked on the "Log Off" button and the updates installation kicks in. It did perform some updates - ~15 or so and then started doing the same thing. It was stuck again on performing some update.

I again let it do the work without interruption for another day and then booted the machine back up. Again waited for it to pick up the leftover updates and tried to do updates from the Control Panel selectively. But unfortunately, the very first update I selected - "Definition Update for Microsoft Security Essentials (KB231038) started updating and now it stopped doing something.

The hard drive activity indicator is lit - computer is working. It just does not perform anything. I don't know whether it tries to install the update or download something or something else.

Does anybody have an idea of what I should do next? This is a fresh Windows 7 + MS Office 2010 install from Best Buy.

TIA!

Answer 1

Microsoft KB949358 has this advice for Windows Update loop :

• Restart Windows and install Windows updates in a clean boot state
  For doing a clean boot, see How to perform a clean boot in Windows.
• Run the Windows Update Troubleshooter
  Download the Windows Update Troubleshooter and execute.
• Perform an in-place upgrade
  See this article. But only execute as the last resort.

Other advice is :

• Rename Windows Update folders by executing the following commands (delete afterward) so it restarts from scratch :

  Ren C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.bak
  Ren C:\Windows\system32\catroot2 catroot2.bak
  

• Sometimes such problems are fixed by installing the System Update Readiness Tool.

Answer 2

Taking a look at the Microsoft Support forums as well as Reddit, it seems like various problems with these definition updates are fairly common. In most cases it looks like uninstalling and reinstalling Microsoft Security Essentials fixes the issue.

If the problem persists after trying that, you might want to just leave MSSE uninstalled, provided you have a third-party antivirus software installed. A lot of them are free (well, freemium) these days.

If none of that helps, the problem must be with another update.