Resolved Update issues

I often find when I am working on a computer problem, it leads me into other problems and I start going around in circles. That has just happened again.
As described in my other thread here, I am trying to solve a problem with HD audio through HDMI. One suggestion I found was to check optional updates for audio driver updates. While trying to do this I have discovered that my updates are not working!

The computer is a Pressario SR5085AN, mobo MCP61PM-HM Rev 1.0A running Win 7 Home Premium. When I run Updates it just sits there forever doing nothing while the maddening tell-nothing "˜progress’ bar flickers back and forth providing no useful information whatsoever. Is it doing anything? Is it hung? How can you tell with such a stupid indicator?

After a few hours of nothing, I ran the repair tool and it found a couple of problems, one of which it said it couldn’t fix, and the Update program finally terminated with no results. After that it started behaving in a random fashion when I tried it. At one point it said updates could not proceed and gave me an "˜unknown’ error #80244019. When I checked this, Microsoft said it most likely indicated a virus. That seemed improbable to me since this was a clean install, hardly used, but I had to go through the motions so I downloaded and updated the latest Malwarebytes. No virus. Then I ran the Fixit tool. As instructed I checked some services, restarted one that had stopped, and tried again. I am now back to the original state, an "˜Update’ that runs forever and never goes anywhere.

I did have some successful updates before, the last on 25 January. At that time Windows updated the updater and it hasn’t worked right since. I am just trying to complete an update check so I can view the optional updates, which I did not previously install. Now I keep getting random results and when I check installed updates, I am told different things at different times. In any case, I can no longer view the optional updates, which is what I really want to do.

 

This issue seems to be solved, though I'm not sure why. I was getting random results, including errors. I uninstalled the Windows Fixit program and the update started running again without error messages. I let it continue for several hours and after a very long time, it started downloading updates. When it finished there were about a dozen failed updates so I ran it again. I got the same error but this time I just kept re-running the update program and after several tries it started again without the error. After that the failed updates installed correctly. These were all important updates. I was then able to view the optional updates and install the one I wanted. It all seems to be working as it should again and it only took me two days! I am marking this resolved and I hope it doesn't happen again.