Unable to run windows update

I'm unable to run windows update on both Windows 7 & Windows 10. They both hang on "checking for updates". I've rebooted the guest OSes, I've rebooted my Mac. I've turned off the Windows firewall & Little Snitch of Mac. I've reinstalled parallels tools. I've switched from bridged to shared network, nothing. Any ideas? I can use web browsers fine.
Parallels 11.1.3, OS X 10.11.4

 

Sorry no solutionfor you Pariahware, have the same problem. Clean install of windows 7(sp1) and unable to find updates. Left it searching for more then 12 hours but no result. Already updated the windows updater, no result.

 

Same problem here. I have identical images of Windows 7 SP1 running on 11.1.2 on two different machines which would update without problems. Updated one Parallels install to 11.1.3, and Windows Update started hanging (and I lost a day and a half to troubleshooting with FixIts, Readiness Tools, MS forums etc). Updated the other one to 11.1.3 this afternoon and now neither updates. Microsoft Security Essentials also hangs. If only I could find a link to download 11.1.2...

 

Went through the Windows 7 manual instructions. Not fixed. Still cannot update.

 

I think there are some issues with Windows Update at Microsoft end at the current time. Have a look at my posts in this thread.

 

Checking for updates on Windows 7 can take up to an hour. Let it run. It is a pathetic implementation of software updating.

(a full Win 7 update from a fresh install can take over 24 hours to get through the seemingly endless cycles of Checking for Updates - Updates - Reboot).

 

I have also this problem since a week or so. I discovered that when working with programs on my Windows 7 in Parallels I had 100% CPU load. After investigating I found that it was the process svchost.exe that hugged a lot of memory and 99% of the CPU. Using the Process Explorer I could see that the instance of svchost that was hugging memory and CPU cycles was connected to the Windows Update service. A quick search on the Internet showed this to be a well know problem and I started to apply the various fixes described by Microsoft and others for this problem. I have also followed the methods described by Parallels and mentioned here by PaulChris, but after several days of trying to solve this problem without success I yesterday decided to installed old backups of my Windows 7 snapshots. I have now installed 5 different snapshots, one as old 1 year, and all of them now have the problem with Windows Update hanging, while in the past they worked without problem. I have therefore come to the conclusion that either there is now a serious problem at Microsoft with Windows Update or the latest update of Parallels Desktop 11 plays havoc with Windows Update for Windows 7. When I installed the old snapshot images the new versions of Parallels Tools gets installed and the old snapshots therefore now works in another environment than in the past. As the snapshots themselves have been stored on offline backup media it can only be the environment in which they now run that creates this problem. At the moment I am back with my current version of Windows 7 but to be able to work I have now disabled completely the Windows Update Service, while waiting for a solution to be found to this problem either by Microsoft or Parallels.

 

I can add that it is not only Windows Update that has a problem. I was just now using Windows 7 running in Parallels and got again 100% CPU load. Again investigating with the Process Explorer I found the same problem with svchost.exe using 99% CPU resources, however with less memory than for Windows Update. The culprit this time was the Adobe Acrobat Update Service. I have now also disabled this service and things are again usable. Good response both in Windows 7 and on the MAC. So my question is what is wrong and where is the problem? It cannot be that both Microsoft and Adobe have problems with their Update Services at the same time. Is it a problem with Parallels that I mentioned earlier? I really don't know. Apart from this problem with the svchost,exe I have no other issues with Parallels. It runs normally and does not load my MAC at all. Presently the Parallels Desktop 11 runs at 0.1% CPU and Windows 7 at 2.8%.

 

I am still trying to understand this problem with Adobe and Windows Update that does not work. I have one question which I should like to get an answer to. Is it possible that the problems with the updates services can be linked with some kind of network problem? I should like to add that I can reach whatever IP address from the IE browser and I have not seen any problems with any downloads. However, lately I have noticed that even if I have a connection to my router there is sometimes no Internet Access when I boot Windows 7 in Parallels. But after running Windows Network Diagnostics it is usually resolved. I have just had such a problem now and the reply from the Diagnostics Tool is: The DNS server isn't responding. Any idea of where to look for a solution to this problem?

 

Hi all,
Please try the solution given in this Microsoft article

 

Thanks for the reply, but this is not the problem. I know very well how to stop and start the bits and wuauserv services. I myself switched off wuauserv to be able to use Windows without svchost loading the CPU to the max. Yesterday there was an update for Parallels 11 that I installed and I have now switched back on wuauserv and I am trying to do a Windows Update. Things are calmer now in the sense that svchost does not take so much memory, but still Windows Update is running and looking for updates. It has been at it now for 3 hours. It does not look very promising.

 

Well, things seems to be back to normal. When running Windows Update I saw that the amount of memory used by svchost was steadily diminishing until at a certain moment the process was no longer running at 99% of CPU resources. However, Windows Update still was searching and searching. This was about an hour after starting Windows Update. Then svchost started again and taking up to 99% of the CPU. After 3 hours I got fed up and stopped Windows Update. I then discovered, when wanting to shutdown Windows that there was one update waiting to be installed. The update was installed during shutdown of the machine. When I so restarted Windows I discovered that there were 12 updates ready for download and installation. These have now been installed and another 2 updates are being installed. It therefore seems that what concerns my installation things are back to normal. Since I switched off the update service on 17th April I have not installed or done anything to my Windows machine apart from using some of applications. The only thing that has changed is the update to Parallels yesterday. So my conclusion is that this problem must have been a problem with Parallels or Parallels Tools. I would advice others that have this Windows Update problem to try the last Parallels update.