Despite Microsoft's efforts to polish its operating systems, Windows Update remains the big black stain on the entire Windows ecosystem. Users around the globe keep reporting one problem after another: strange errors, hotfix searches that stretch for hours... we've seen it all. In an attempt to help those users, Redmond updated its Windows Update troubleshooting page, which addresses the most common error codes.
Windows Update is a disaster. Mandatory in Windows 10, painfully slow in Windows 7, and a bit of both in Windows 8.1. Microsoft's refusal to change its update policy to make life easier for users is very concerning. And of course, the consequences are the most serious. Faced with a lack of official responses, the average user cuts their losses and resigns to an outdated environment, interrupting the main Windows Update service. Windows 7 users are begging for an additional Service Pack (the Convenience Rollup helped, but it wasn't enough) and Windows 10 users want updates to be optional. At the end of the day, nobody gets what they want, and that's compounded by the constant errors that certain hotfixes throw under some configurations.
These errors have been documented by Microsoft and placed on a special support page. Basically, what the company is trying to do here is to guide users in the right direction depending on the version of the operating system that's having issues. For Windows 10, the first recommendation is to download the troubleshooter. If that doesn't work, the portal suggests download the latest hotfix manually and reset the Windows Update state in a certain way. If the error persists, the recommendation is to run several DISM commands, followed by an integrity check with the command sfc /scannow. If the error still doesn't go away, you have to restore the Windows 10 installation to a previous state... or reinstall it completely.
Under Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, the support page gives us even fewer options. In fact, if the troubleshooter can't resolve the problem, Microsoft directly suggests reinstalling the operating system, which means waiting for hours on end until Windows Update finishes recreating its catalog with hundreds of hotfixes, something that could be completely avoided if Microsoft offered a real Service Pack.
