Everything was working fine until a couple of days ago and now Windows Update and Windows Defender will not connect to the network to update themselves. On Windows Update I get hung up on "checking for updates" for more than an hour and on Defender it hangs about halfway during "searching (for updates) or I get a "failed to connect" message within the Defender Window. I am running Windows 8.1 PRO in Parallels on my MacBookPro and the network settings are set to Default Adaptor (bridged), device manager doesn't show any problems with the network adaptor. Parallels Tech Support suggested a command line function of "sfc / scannow" which I ran and it didn't find any problems either. The internet connection works because I can open Internet Explorer and browse web pages no problem. Also, Defender did successfully update itself once today but then when I tried it again a few minutes later it gave me the "failed to connect" error again. Could this be just a coincidental failure of the Microsoft servers for those two programs? Very frustrating since I was going to install another license on my MacMini but now I'm waiting until these issues are resolved so any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you,
