"Windows Can't Check For Updates"---Anyone else had this message on their computer? What did you do to resolve it?

when you right click the update icon, what options are you offered? if any.

when you tell it to manually check for updates, what does it do?, does it show any error messages?, if so what messages?, including any error number it gives.

Take a look at this thing, read, download, install and run the scan. I waited around a few minutes to see if you answered, but its real late here and im sleepy, so ill leave you with that link.

Its basically a little official microsoft fix, it will scan your system to see if it is ready to recieve updates or not. if there is a problem, it will try and fix it.

This should fix the problem in a few cases, but not all cases, post a reply to let me know how it goes, if it does not work ill see what i can do for you when i get back in a few hours.

Ran into this twice just recently, it seems to be a problem with one of the big updates.

There should be an error number when you click on the bubble that will give you some more information and get you pointed in the right direction.

For both of them, somehow the permissions had gotten messed up on some files, if your error message points in the same direction, following the instructions here fixed it in their case

Good luck with it, I spent several hours digging around before finally figuring it out.

one note on the tool @poisonedantidote pointed to, it takes a long time to run and doesn’t look like it’s doing anything, this is apparently normal and noted in the page he linked to… When I ran it, I thought the tool had locked up and cancelled out before realizing my error. Hopefully save you a few minutes.

@poisonedantidote Thank you. I tried that before posting this question here, and the “Windows Can’t Check For Updates” still appears. Yes, it takes awhile to download, according to funkdaddy.

Do you have a legitimate copy of Windows? Not to call your integrity into question, but often Windows updates will fail because the installation is not genuine.

@MRSHINYSHOES I had this situation with my Win XP Professional SP3 a while ago. This was before Fluther.

The bad news for me was I had to do a complete reinstall of the operating system, after backing up all my files. I reinstalled and made two partitions, one for Windows and the other for storage, so that if I ever re-experienced this, it would be a bit easier to fix.