Windows update not working.

[Baron]

Finally (or just about) finished building my new Skylake PC with Windows 7 Ultimate, ready to update to Windows 10.
However, although I can get on the internet as normal, clicking on windows update just shows 'checking for updates' and nothing happens. I have left it running whilst I grew a beard, nipped into town for a bit of shopping, and when I come back, it is still checking.

I have installed my original Windows 7 Home Premium-64bit, gave up and started again with a new Windows 7 Ultimate-64bit disc, and neither of them will do anything whilst checking for updates.

I tried to update Wins 7 to Windows 10, but it gets as far as 'checking for upates' during the installation, but gets no where.

To say that I am a little bit miffed that I cannot update Windows is an understatement. ! 

Installing my original Windows 7 and updating to Win 10 on my 'old' PC was never a problem with updates.

Anyone got any tea, biscuits and sympathy, or even better, advice as to how I can overcome this annoyance ?

Skylake is based on the Gigabyte G1 Z170X motherboard and i7-6700K.
Bog standard settings in the BIOS and no overclocking.
Let me know if you need any further info.

Thanks. 

[absic]

Plenty of tea, biscuits & sympathy here.

I have faced this very situation on several builds and the best way, that I have found to solve it is, to re-set Windows Update.

Here is a link to a Microsoft support page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/971058 that explains how to do this. So, I imagine it is a fairly common problem.

Hopefully this will get you back up and running asap.

[shadowsports]

Baron,
Sympathy yes, but this is not a hardware issue if the machine can get to the web. 

Let start with your software environment.

What programs to you have installed on the machine?, Anti-Virus / Software FW, etc?
Does the System Event Viewer show any errors
Have you tested both NIC's

Tell us about your internet connection.  Who's the provider, what type of hardware are you connecting to (router / modem, combo)?

Will another machine connected to the same hardware get to windows update successfully? We know your old system would, but what about today?

You may also try System File Checker

From elevated command prompt >SFC /scannow

Or Update troubleshooter:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Open-the-Windows-Update-troubleshooter

One other thing, if you are using an old copy of windows 7, there is a small chance that the initial update to get the machine ready for upgrade to 10 could take a while.  How long would depends on your hardware an internet connection.  It's likely something else, but just throwing that out there to cover all bases.

***Absic and I posted at the same time...  you can try his suggestion first.  Seems odd that two installs would fail in the same manner.
 

[Baron]

Thank you all Gentlemen for your advice.

However (sorry to waste your time) I re-installed the Intel RST drivers (dunno why they didn't stick the first time around), and that fixed it, so clicking on windows update, many millions of updates quickly appeared !

Result, me now happy bunny and I can now enjoy my shiny new 'puter.

[shadowsports]

Time for that cup of tea...

Cheers!

[Baron]

Milk no sugar ? 
I am not celebrating too much at the moment, because the 'preparing to install' window seems to be taking a little bit too much time to do anything, so not totally convince that all is well.
But at least it is an improvement over not doing anything at all. 

Thanks for replying though....

[dmdilks]

I work with computer shop some times to help with Gigabyte boards. He had some what of the same problem. He had to keep doing updates on windows 7 to he got to a point that it would let him update to windows 10. Why it did it I can't tell you and he couldn't either. I have installed windows 7 & install the drives with no updates and it updates to windows 10.

All I can say is keep plugging away till you get it. If you do get it to work. Plus once windows 10 is activated. I would then do a clean install of windows 10. Windows 10 is attach to that mother board and you don't ever have to activate it ever again.   

[Baron]

Thanks !

There are currently showing 228 plus 46 optionals showing. So far I have de-selected nearly all of them and tried to download just a few.
 It sort of worked, but the .net frame work ones failed.
Originally it was 243 important updates, so at least I have installed some of them. 

I did try updating to Win 10 but that failed trying to get updates, so I just had to cancel it after about 20 mins.

Tomorrow I shall have another go, and de-select the majority to try and install them in small amounts, but I am not holding my breath.

I had absolutely no problems at all when I built my last machine based on an i7 920, on an Gigabyte EX58 Extreme flagship board, and the BIOS was a darned sight easier to navigate than this shiny new uefi BIOS !

I have the latest F7 BIOS updated from the original.
But although everything works just fine (I have Win 7 mounted on the Samsung 950 Nvme 256GB, and also cloned a copy of it onto a Samsung EVO 850 250GB drive, so that once I can succeed on one, then I can clone it over for safety, like wot I always does. 

It really seems to be hard work to get this PC running as it should, and almost tempted to call in a PC fix it matey to help me out, and hoping the money will be well spent.
I only had to do that back when I first started with a PC on Win98, when I didn't know how to install an OS, and managed building PC's just fine ever since.............until now.

The expectations of building a new PC has now rather soured as I can't get it running properly....*sad face. 
P.S. It hurts a bit because I always buy Gigabyte motherboards....

But thank you all for helpful replies. 

[dmdilks]

Look at your updates and if there is a update for IE-11 don't do that one. If you getting fail updates it is always the 1st one in the list and it is usually IE-11. One other thing you can try is download windows 10 and make a disk. It gives that option to do it later that might work. I myself have all windows 10 OS on disk.

[Baron]

Thanks again for all advice.

Right, windows will find and download updates, but only a few out of the 200 odd shown, and the rest fail.
After the downloads saying they are installing, on the reboot it says they failed, then retries, reverts back to previous, then tries again, and reboots, and when I look at the update history, it shows that some are installed and most have failed.

Only 11 out of that lot have installed correctly !

I have checked in 'device manager' which shows that all drivers are installed, and not yellow warnings etc.

IE11 has been downloaded and installed, and working.

I am going to clone what is done so far onto another drive, and then try updating to win10 on one of them and see what happens, but from previous experience, it will probably hang at retrieving updates.

This is really miffing me off, because otherwise, the PC all works perfectly.   

[dmdilks]

Can you take a screen shot of the Important updates. But not all of them just the top 1/2.

[shadowsports]

Baron,
Some updates are cumulative   Some have pre-requisites.  So, some updates might fail, even if selected when a dependency exists.  See my first reply, where I mentioned an older copy of install media will not have the updates needed to get your install to an upgradeable state.  Like dmdilks said...  just keep plugging away at it.  You should get there eventually.   

[MikeHawk1969]

Yea I just reinstalled on my GFs rig & of course it took days to get it all updated. There are probably thousands of people on  the internet complaining about this issue. A lot of conspiracy theorists feel it's the way it will be to force people to get Win10. I feel it's more of a symptom of Win10, not a result. They're so focused on getting Win10 out they don't think about previous versions. I also feel they're supporting too many products right now. From all the OS' (Vista-10), but all the office products & server OS' they support. If there was a way to get that new Chrome OS & have it work as well as Windows I'd switch in a New York minute.

Linux+Wine=???

[Baron]

Thanks chaps for taking the time to reply.

After many hours pulling what is left of my hair out, many mugs of coffe, and an awful lot of swear words, including some I made up in the heat of the moment. 

But, I tried another of my bright ideas, and that was to clone over an installed windows 7 on a Samsung 950 Pro Nvme 226GB drive onto my clean and formatted WD 500GB Black drive.

This seems to have worked and I had 239 updates - recommended ones - which nearly all installed except for 11 of them.
A bit late now, but am pleased with the progress so far, and will set about grabbing any further recommended and some of the optional ones tomorrow, as at the moment I am all putered out. 

But, there were none of the problems I encountered on the SSD and Nvme drives.....but, in their defence they are pretty damn fast compared to my mechanical drives, and hopefully they will be the operational ones for running Windows - eventually.

Then comes plan B. I will then clone over the fully updated (I hope) WD 500GB onto another new and fresh WD 500GB Black drive, to keep as a back up drive, and the second drive will then be used to update to Windows 10.

That will keep me amused and out of mischief for some hours tomorrow. 

It seems that updates work far better on a mechanical drive, than they do on an SSD or Nvme drive. At least that appears to me my theory, but seems to have worked.

But thanks again everyone for taking the time and interest to try to help me out.