I have been dealing with two Win 7 x64 Home computers that have always been set to receive automatic Windows Updates. A glance at the WU GUIs will show the green tick and tell you that "no important updates are available". However the first one had last been updated in May 2016 and the second in August! I have already manually fixed the first one but I can't understand why we need manual intervention when Windows is supposed to be doing this automatically. I cannot help thinking that MS are up to something rather devious here. Could it be that they are thinking along these lines: "All the Average Joes have already had their Win7 and 8.1s upgraded to Win 10 following our consistent barrage of nagging for a year. Consequently, those who are still using Win 7 have made a manual intervention to prevent the W10 upgrade (in these two cases I used Never 10 last April to do this). Therefore if they think they are clever enough to do that, we will stop their automatic updates and see if they are clever enough to sort it out! If not, we might yet get them over to W10!" I know this sounds a bit conspiratorial but I can't think of another reason for the halt in the updates. Never 10 may be a cause but I very much doubt it and can't find anything on the web to suggest that it is. Grateful if anyone can throw some light on this issue.
Doing so, they would be taking chance of losing those users. Users would have to decide whether to pay for upgrade or switch to free Linux. Though problems with updates during free upgrade offer probably were used for that purpose.
Thing is there must be (hundred of) thousands of users in the same boat though. They are not getting updates but, if they look at the WU GUI, it tells them that they ARE up to date, so the vast majority would look no further unless prompted by their "tech advisor". Surely Windows cannot be happy with this situation? Essentially these users are running systems with security holes in them and it seems to me that MS are compliant in this.
Yes, but those users, wouldn't they be Average Joes from your OP (already on Windows 10)? Yes, I also think that they really don't care. If those systems get owned, they will just say: upgrade to Windows 10, it's safer OS
I bet this will work. Tweaking.com - Windows Repair Portable 3.9.19 Repair #17 only in Safe Mode has worked many times. http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/tweaking_com_windows_repair_portable.html
for those that are having problems' in updating windows 7 make sure you have Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB3185278 installed the file can be found here http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB3185278 the correct procedure for installing these updates are as follows click on windows updates' and then click on change settings 'then click on never check for updates then reboot and then install the above. you should now find that updates will resume as normal and can then click on automatic updates again Decembers roll up can be found here if needed http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/search.aspx?q=3207752 for those using windows vista the December roll up can be found here http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=3204723
you need to do this: Download KB3177467 kb3172605 from http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/ go to windows update settings and disable (never), restart windows - install KB3177467 and restart - install KB3172605 and restart then reset windows update settings to normal and let search. HTH