[SOLVED] Windows Update not triggering even with Out of Date message

[aLx450]

Hi everyone,

I come to this great community after looking around a lot online and trying many approaches, but I can't get Windows Update to cooperate.

I found out I was missing updates because the Xbox App prevented me from installing a game unless I had "the latest Windows Update installed". Naturally, I went to Windows Update. There's a message in red saying I'm missing critical security updates. I then click on Look for Updates... it spins for 10 seconds or so... and does not find anything.

I have tried the following so far...

1. Rebooted PC (multiple times)
2. Disk Cleanup to ensure I had enough space on C Drive (15+ Gb at the moment, I don't see how that would not be enough)
3. Shutting down and spinning services back up through services.smc (bits, wuauser, msiserver, cryptsvc) via Right-click -> Start. Set start up mode to automatic when it wasnt already.
   1. Surprisingly, bits does not stay at Start up type Automatic. As soon as I reboot, it goes back to Manual
4. At that point I figured maybe someone installed some garbage somewhere... Ran MalwareBytes, it did not find anything.
5. Ensured Windows Defender was running. Shut if off and on again.
6. Repeated Step 3 but through the command prompt with admin privileges.

I have run out of ideas. I have to be honest here, these types of things are not my forte. I'm not a software guy at all, and I'm not comfortable messing around with Registry keys, if the need comes, so I've stopped there and have come here for help.

I honestly have no clue how long it's been since an update ran. I clean installed about three months ago and I know there was atleast one update that ran on a shutdown in the first couple weeks, but not in the last month or so, at the very minimum.

I know this post is verbose, I tried to provide as many details as I can. I would greatly appreciate any pointers.
Thanks everyone!

 

[gardenman]

Try this. Go here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
and click on the Update Now button. Run the Update Assistant program that it downloads.

This will (hopefully) bypass Windows Update.

 

[aLx450]

Try this. Go here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
and click on the Update Now button. Run the Update Assistant program that it downloads.

This will (hopefully) bypass Windows Update.

Preparing update as we speak, will report back.
Last time I used that tool, I crashed to a blue screen with Windows sadface on it while the update was being applied.... Let's hope this time is different 😀

 

[aLx450]

It took so long I had to let it run for a few hours last night.
The tool did not crash, so that's good news.

However, I looked for updates and it tells me the last update is a Feature Update for Windows 2004. I downloaded and installed it, it took hours. Then, if I go back to look for updates, it tells me the same feature update needs to be downloaded and installed, Windows 2004...

Is this normal? Are there two of them? It doesnt make any sense to me...

 

[aLx450]

Update! I ran the Windows Update Assistant again (I can confirm it wants to install the latest 21h1) and stayed in front of the screen the whole way through this time. Sadly, the update crashes at around 30% to a Windows sadface blue screen of "Your system has run into a problem...". The not so descriptive error says "Page Fault in Non-Paged area".

Ironically, I'm looking through articles on this site to try and fix this.....

 

[gardenman]

The sad face is a blue screen of death, commonly called a BSOD. These are caused by bad hardware (disk, cpu, gpu, ram, etc) or a bad driver. They are very difficult to track down. The update itself is very unlikely to be the cause of your BSOD.

My first guess would be a bad disk. Research, download, and run disk testing software and check the SMART values for each of your drives. Secondly, run Windows Memory Diagnostic. This will take place on a reboot and should take less than 30 minutes. It's not that thorough, but if you have an obviously RAM issue it will be detected.

If neither of those help, set your PC up to create a small dump (minidump) when it crashes. Run the update again and let it crash. A minidump will be created in C:\Windows\minidump. Upload it so I can take a look to see if it points to a driver or not.

How to Create Small Dump: https://techclassy.com/memory-dump-windows/

 

[aLx450]

I'm getting to that conclusion aswell!

I have run the Disk Diagnostics tool, no issues.
I also ran Memory Check, I had to walk away from the screen during the process and when I came back my PC had rebooted without showing me results. Not sure if it's a timeout thing or the same BSOD during the tests...

I will keep looking tomorrow... I hope it's not the memory again, I had to change the sticks last year as one stopped working... DDR3 is hard to come by... 😀

Should I start a new thread since this is evolving?

Thanks!

 

[gardenman]

Let's stay in this same thread.

How to see the results of Memory Diagnostic
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...nostic-i/36f9d014-256a-4757-927a-d85ade3b0c09

 

[Colif]

page fault could just be a driver, so what are specs of the PC?
page fault in non paged area. the non paged area is ram, its where all the drivers run, so its likely just a misbehaving driver.

Download and run Driverview - http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html

All it does is looks at drivers installed; it won't install any (this is intentional as 3rd party driver updaters often get it wrong)

When you run it, go into view tab and set it to hide all Microsoft drivers, will make list shorter.

Now its up to you, you can look through the drivers and try to find old drivers, or you can take a screenshot from (and including)Driver name to (and including)Creation date.

upload it to an image sharing website and show link here

All I would do is look at driver versions (or dates if you lucky to have any) to see what might have newer versions.

(just answering as Gardenman asked me to)

might need to try this, it only fixes windows itself though - https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/16397-repair-install-windows-10-place-upgrade.html

 

[aLx450]

The only log I could find regarding Memory Diagnostics was an Information that said something along the lines of "Memory Diagnostics was started..." and the time corresponds to when it was ran.

As for Drivers, I think I'm in trouble.......

(The forum gives me an error when I try to insert the first image with tags...)

https://ibb.co/pPW8rMT

drivers2

Image drivers2 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

I have never updated/tweaked my BIOS either since I put the PC together 6+ years ago, could that be an issue?
Thanks for your help!

 

[aLx450]

Can a BIOS flash be a good idea in terms of covering all the bases? I've never done such a thing but I'm willing to learn if it can help....