Recently, I was working with a customer and they had an issue updating their Windows 7 PC. Basically, whenever they tried to run a check for updates, they would get the following error bulletin:

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

Of course, restarting did non help. When we checked if the Windows Update Service was running, we found that it was running. And so now nosotros were dislocated.

In this situation, yous can solve the trouble past deleting all the currently downloaded updates and retrying. Sometimes an update gets corrupted and and so Windows gets confused and thinks the service is no longer running.

Delete Windows Updates

The offset affair to practise is to stop the Windows Update service on your Windows 7 machine. You tin can do this by going to Start and typing in services.msc in the search box.

windows update services

Side by side, press Enter and the Windows Services dialog will appear. Now scroll down until you see the Windows Update service, correct-click on it and choose Finish.

stop windows update service

Now that the Windows Update service has been disabled, you lot need to get to the following binder and delete all the files and folders within of it:

C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\

software distribution

In one case you accept deleted everything, get back to the Services dialog and right-click on the Windows Update service and cull Start. All the files and folders will exist re-created and hopefully you tin start downloading updates for your PC.

If you're nonetheless having problems, brand sure to cheque out our previous posts on removing and reinstalling all Windows Updates, fixing Windows Update Error Code 0x80072efe, and fixing Windows Update Error Code 8E5E03FA. Enjoy!