"Paul" wrote in message
news
Emrys Davies wrote:


Nearly all of what you have just said is totally beyond me and you cannot
blame me for thinking why has he waffled to such an extent when you must
know by now that only simple steps where I understand the logic of what I
am doing will suffice. Otherwise it causes an uncomfortable feeling and
I am left thinking why don't I leave well alone rather that being
subjected to stressful situations at my age, when everyone says 'Enjoy
Yourself'. Unless you can take short steps without the technical
explanations, which mean nothing to me, it is best that we call it a day.

I hate not leaving people with *some* choices.

I'm not able to find any good suggestions for where
to look next.

Even the sites where the author of the site has
the technical skill to make further suggestions,
they offer "Windows Update Troubleshooter" as
their solution. That is not a solution, because
it's success rate is so low.

*******

The next step for you is Repair Install.

There are no other options on the chart now.

That's it.

*******

Repair Install is a tradeoff between "it would be nice if I
could get Windows Update to work, for the security
patches", versus all the side-effects of doing
a Repair Install.

A repair install is relatively easy. You will need
a Windows 7 SP1 DVD to match the machine setup you
currently have. You can use the "winver" command
as one way to get version information. You can
use the "System" control panel to determine the
bit-ness of the current OS installation. The DVD will
be 32 bit or 64 bit, to match the 32 bit or 64 bit
OS install. You start by collecting "winver" and
"System" control panel information first, then
reviewing your DVD collection for a match.

If you purchased Windows 7 and installed the OS yourself,
then you could use the media (DVD disc) you got. While
Windows 7 is running, you run "Setup.exe" off the DVD
when it is inserted in the DVD drive. And it will
re-install the OS, keeping your programs and user
data files.

When such an installation is finished, you will still
need to do ~200 updates or whatever Windows Update
throws at you. It would be nice to think that
a Windows Update run would be "flawless" on an
out-of-the-box install, but this is seldom
the case, and I won't bore you with the details.

The WSUSOffline patch installer, it actually knows
how to "bandaid" a freshly Repair Installed Windows 7
machine, for best results. In fact, that's where
we "steal the recipe" for tipping a new install
properly upright. The WSUSOffline patcher installs
the latest version of Windows Update first, plus
it manually installs five other patches that "work
the best" with todays Windows Update.

http://download.wsusoffline.net/

You run the tool in "collection mode" first, and
collect around 2GB of patches. Once the Repair Install
is finished, you use the USB stick with your
"collection" on it, and run the stick in Install Mode.
And it will finish the Windows Update steps for you.

*******

Since this is bound to upset you, take the machine
to Geek Squad. For $200, they will do a Repair Install
and patch Windows Update to the very latest patch.

If you use Geek Squad, *back up the hard drive* first.
Never ever ever go to a mom-and-pop or a Geek Squad
repair depot, without making the backup first. The
backup can be stored on an external hard drive. You
keep the external hard drive at home, where they
can't muck it up :-)

I've had a few reports of people heading off to
the computer store, and some yutz there deletes
the entire drive and does a "Clean Install" and
all the files are gone. And the dude who does
this will say "Oops! Too bad and so sad", meaning,
if you had a backup, you would not be screwed by
his incompetence. Computer shop people *never ever*
do backups before they start a procedure. They
take no prisoners. If what they've done fails,
you're on the hook for the files, not them.

It's because they line the machines up, like in
a production line. All the "Clean Install" machines
go into a pile. It's easy for a PC to be put in the
wrong pile, they do a "Clean Install", and right
after that... the idiot reads the customer problem
description and finds out he wasn't supposed to do
that. That's how clueless they are. It's a factory,
not "personal service" model. Shops can do good
work, better than I could do, but they have to be
in a good mood before it happens. If the success
rate of shop repairs was better, I would not have
to give this warning to people.

*******

Since this is a Windows Update problem, you should
be able to phone up Microsoft Support, and *without*
a credit card, they can try and fix it. You might
need to be elevated to next-level support to
actually get it fixed. The entry level support
will be trying the "Windows Update Troubleshooter",
just like you did :-/ If you're not a rich guy,
that's the route I would take next. Only certain
issues on Windows machines receive free support.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...-phone-numbers

I can't necessarily get the US number as they use
geolocation to give me the Canadian support number,
which would not work for you.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/contact.aspx

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/about/officelocator

They'll do just about anything to avoid giving
a phone number... easily. But it's still worth
a try. If you had a Microsoft Store in town, you
could contact them and see if you could do a
"walk in" with the computer case. And have them
fix the Windows Update they broke.

And all you need to tell them is (substitute your version):

Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows Update 0x80073712
Windows Troubleshooter cannot fix.

HTH,
Paul

Paul,

My first thought is to leave well alone because my computer is serving me
well without hassle. It is relatively old and will diminish gradually as
Windows fail to support it. Eventually I might decide to buy a new one
which will do the job. In the meantime I will fiddle about and try to solve
this problem. Today I ran sfc/scannow and it looked very promising until I
checked Windows Updates. It said: 'Windows Resource Protection found
corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them' a familiar story. Details
are included in the CBS.Log windir\Logs\CBS.log.

My very sincere greetings for the festive season.