Windows Update will not run on a Windows 7 PC

Recently, I was working with a client that had VMware Horizon and they had an issue updating their Windows 7 base images.  Basically, when they tried to run a check for updates, they would get the following error message:

Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer.

After checking the Windows Update Service and it was showing that is was started and running.  This was going to be a head scratcher.

Solution:

You can solve the problem by deleting all the currently downloaded updates. Sometimes the update(s) get corrupted and then Windows stop reporting that the service is running.

The first thing to do is to stop the Windows Update service on your Windows 7 machine. You can do this by going to Start and typing in services.msc in the search box.

The Windows Services dialog will appear. Scroll down until you see the Windows Update service, right-click on it and choose Stop. (You might have to change the Startup Type to MANUAL)

Once the Windows Update service has been stopped, you need to go to the following folder and delete all the files and folders inside of it:

C:WindowsSoftwareDistribution

Once you have deleted all the contents of this folder, go back to the Services screen and right-click on the Windows Update service and choose Start.  All the files and folders will be re-created and hopefully you can start downloading updates for your PC.

Not a lot to this post.  Thanks for reading.