Emrys Davies wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
news
Emrys Davies wrote:
Nothing has changed. The Windows Update continues to fail except for
three which continue to install, over and over again, regardless.
The others continue to fail over and over again. All were acting
like that before we intervened. I know what is wrong it is me trying
to put into action what you have requested with me being totally out
of my depth and I thank you sincerely for being so persistent and
patient.
We're not out of options yet.
One question I have, before suggesting new things
to try, is did
"Windows Component Store is Corrupt - Error 80073712"
go away ? Or is that still happening ?
That error is still ever present
If you're still getting that error, then it's possible
other operations will not run or work right. It's important
to fix that.
*******
Write down the failed (looping) KB numbers. They
are likely queued up behind the thing that is really
jammed. Look in Windows Update "history" tab, for the
first one that failed, that never got fixed by a
later attempt to install it.
Let's say KB12345678 is missing. Go to
https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Home.aspx
and type in the failed KB number as "KBxxxxxxx" or so.
The prominent looping number is KB3071756
The search will return candidates. Make sure you grab
the 64 bit one for a 64-bit OS. Click the Download
button. If you see a "Delta" one in the list, ignore.
What you really want to download, is one ending in .msu.
You can double-click the file once it downloads.
I find that SoftwareDistribution problems can sometimes
be bypassed, by manually doing the .msu based installs
instead. Once you fix the one that is actually jamming
up the works, the others sometimes then install with
no further fuss.
I found one likely search result for KB3071756 out of 17 suggestions and
it made an effort to install it after
initializing but it failed saying 'The following updates were not
installed (KB3071756)
You can clean out SoftwareDistribution.
There are scripts for this.
https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...ate-reset.html
You can instead, also look in Control Panels for
Troubleshooter, and use the Windows Update one for fun.
This is safer, because Microsoft is doing it :-/
https://i.postimg.cc/Hj1gJMGS/troubleshooter.gif
Paul
Done the latter many time and very recently, but without success.
One point of interest: These two updates repeatedly download
successfully and they mostly head the failed ones. They are KB3004375
and KB3031432. Microsoft Security Essentials KB2310138, which I
installed quite recently, has always been successful but repeated itself
several times, but not of late.
It suggests here, the damage was done in the year 2015.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...0-2f0e99612b53
You've probably gone past my pay scale right there.
My skill set is limited to relatively simple things, like
jamming in a pesky .msu manually and hoping for the best.
*******
A question from me would be, "does the broken component store prevent
KB removals?". I don't know that.
And that's how computer maintenance works. There are several possibilities
0) update in-flight stuck - not likely in this case because
the machine still boots. An update will resolve as "failed"
or "succeeded" upon boot, and can't be in-flight then.
1) updating blocked in the forward direction (install .msu is typical solution)
2) update and corrective removal blocked at the same time, preventing
forward or backward movement without fixing one of them. Might
have to fix removal problem first.
3) Deadly embrace. Forward and backward movement "share" something,
such that any attempt to do either, results in failure. I've
experienced this on Gentoo Linux, for example. I managed to fix
one of these once, with guided help. And a couple other times, not.
I was at my limits on "thinking" and "playing chess" on those.
I'm *hoping* in your case, it's (1) and the corrupted component
store is a red herring. And that removal of those suggested KBs
might have some positive effect. But that's a long shot.
CheckSUR should normally be able to repair the WinSXS component store.
And that's why, examining the checksur log was important, to see
if there are any comments that might suggest your situation is a (2).
As far as I know, Windows doesn't have (3), and that's just a
Gentoo thing - on Gentoo it happens because the OS changes
entire software subsystems on the fly, something Windows doesn't
do.
Before doing anything rash, do a system backup capturing
C: and System Reserved (if you have one). That's in case you
break something while working on it.
*******
You can prepare a patch collection with this for Windows 7.
http://download.wsusoffline.net/
That's a tool which prepares a complete patch set for a virgin OS.
Once the DVD or USB stick is prepared, the idea is, you can plug
the media into any Windows 7 machine and patch it up-to-date
to todays date.
How it works, is the tool downloads wsusscn2.cab (250MB from Microsoft)
and works out a patch list. The tool has folders with "exceptions"
and patches it does not plan on installing. The tool currently has
a nuance, in that you can select "Security Only" patches and
(perhaps) avoid adding CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program,
a kind of program performance spyware) support to your OS.
Just ticking the right tick boxes for shortest preparation time,
is an art with that tool. It will take you a few tries before you
become comfortable with preparing one. If you tick too many boxes,
you will get several 800MB Service Pack files for example. The
only penalty for ticking too many boxes, is an extremely long
download time. An "economical" preparation still has to download
250 files or so.
The files don't have to be stored any place magical. There's
no benefit to putting the files on an ISO or a USB stick. The
reason for putting the files on media, is for easy sharing
or bulk deployment (in your IT kit bag). As long as you can
get at the folder with the "file collection" in it, that's
what counts the most. You could, for example, access the files
via file sharing or something. But the tool does have tick
boxes which make it seem like "output media" is the only option.
You can simply have the files collected right next to the
tool itself, and deal with loading the files onto a USB
stick later.
The tool has a "collector" to collect the patch, and
a "client installer". You run the "client installer" when
you take the USB stick to some machine. Nothing prevents
you from running the "client installer" on the same
machine as you did the collecting with.
In the client subfolder, is where you run the installer and
have it figure out what to install. The *files* being downloaded,
come from Microsoft, *not* from wsusoffline. All that wsusoffline
does in this case, is craft the update list and fetch the files.
The files are still straight from Microsoft. Microsoft would
send out its legal team, if any attempt was made to serve
the files directly from a wsusoffline server.
The only way wsusoffline would improve the current situation,
is if some supersedence in it allowed removal of the pesky
patches automatically. But that tool is another way to patch up
a Windows system.
If you do a "Repair Install" of your OS, you can use wsusoffline
stick to security patch it up-to-date. One magical thing the
wsusoffline has, is it has a short list of patches (around five
or so) that are critical to getting Windows Update to stop looping
on a virgin system. Once the five patches are installed, the "delay"
before Windows does anything with the patches, is reduced. Your
current system already has the critical patches in place (since
Windows Update is nominally working now to fetch updates).
*******
All I've got to offer you, is the above answers.microsoft.com thread.
I couldn't find anything on askwoody.com that seemed applicable.
You're probably three years behind on patching. Not that this
is important in any way. It's just for perspective I'm pointing
this out. Being jammed is good, in the sense that if you can
locate the two named patches in the thread, removing those
patches might still help - even though it's three years
later.
Paul