"T" wrote in message news
Hi All,

Speaking of a house of cards, if you are getting a stupid "windows
can not update because the update service in not running" error
and the service is actually running.

1) stop the windows update service

2) delete the Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder

3) restart the service

4) reopen the Update Windows dialog. Click the update
button. If it still does not work, on the right, click on
the change setting line. Then change back to the check
updates dialog and try again. Worked four out of four
times for me.

HTH,
-T

Thank you. I wish that I would have seen this fix sooner. I maintain 7
computers and had just completed setting up an upgrade for my daughter and
settled down to do some leisure work on my main computer. I found the
"update service in not running" error. I ran into an update problem a few
years ago and after a couple days poking at it, I did a reinstall. After a
half day poking with this I decided to save time and do a reinstall. I
stumbled onto your post and checked out two other computers. They both had
the "update service in not running" error. Your fix was applied to both
successfully. Thank you again for posting this fix.---Dean