stuck on Windows 8 update

[SavannahLion]

One of the Win8 boxes gets a lot of updates.... At least five every single day. At first I chalked it up to it being a brand new machine but after awhile it became a little silly. 5 new updates. Every day. For three months? No way.

So on a whim I allowed it to go through the update/reboot cycle but before the process completed I disconnected it from the network.

At first all is good. No new updates. Until almost 12 hours later, Win8 tells me I have five new update and it needs to restart. WTF?! What ether is the damn OS getting them from?

Anyways, this symptom is exactly what happened when XP choked on a update and kept trying to install the same damn updates over and over.

Problem is, this is CrapOS 8. The XP process doesn't apply and it appears Microsoft took down the Windows Update site so I can't see what is being downloaded.

A Google search just turns up a lot of useless articles at the usual crap sites.

I'm stuck and annoyed. Not a good combination. Where the ---fudgesicle--- does Win8 hide what update is installing?

[knave]

- reimage with win 7.

LOL...no, seriously try this...

For Windows 8
1.Swipe in from the right side to view the charms, tap or click Search, and then type View Update History.
2.Tap or click Settings, and then select View update history.
3.Tap or click Status to sort by status, and then look for any updates that have a status of "Failed."
4.Tap-and-hold or right-click an update that has a status of "Failed," and then select View Details. The window that opens displays the error code for that update.

If that doesn't show anything try a repair with the install DVD.

...or reimage for real this time...

[SavannahLion]

This is a win8 only PC. Win7 isn't an option.... That info was enough to navigate to get the information I needed. Many thanks.  I truly hate the new paradigm Miscrosoft is foisting on desktop users.

Anayways,  here is an update for future reference.

KB2862966 was failing. According to the logs (which is what I was hunting down), the specific error code was 0x80073712.

This is what Microsoft has to say about fixing the problem:

To resolve this problem in Windows 8, perform one of the following methods:
Method 1: Run the Windows Update troubleshooter

    Tap or click the following Fix it button to run the troubleshooter:
    Microsoft fix it banner

    The Automatically diagnose and fix common problems with Windows Update troubleshooter may automatically fix the problem described in this article.

    This troubleshooter fixes many problems. learn more
       run now
    Run the troubleshooter. Then, open Windows Update and try to install the update again.

Method 2: Run the DISM tool

    Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, and then tap Search.
    Note If you are using a mouse, point to the upper-right corner of the screen. Then, move the mouse pointer down, and then click Search.
    Enter command prompt in the search box.
    In the list of results, swipe down on or right-click Command Prompt, and then tap or click Run as administrator.
    In the Administrator: Command Prompt window, type the following commands. Press the Enter key after each command:

    DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth

    DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

    To close the Administrator: Command prompt window, type Exit, and then press Enter.
    Run Windows Update again.

Method 3: Refresh your PC

    For information about how to do this, go to How to restore, refresh, or reset your PC.

I tried methods one and two neither worked. Method 3 might have worked, but according to Microsoft's own website, this would cause the PC to revert back to a factory state thereby losing any installed program settings from programs installed since factory fresh and restore programs removed or lost since. I took this to mean that this would result in some programs that depend on whatever passes for a registry to become crippled (yet still remain on the drive) and the manufactures garbage re-appearing again. This OEM installation came with quite a bit of adware and nagware (Such as WildTangents utter crap) I wasn't interested in seeing again. Besides, Toshiba sucks, I didn't get an install disc with this. I'm sure it's probably somewhere on the drive. I did make a disk image using the utility in Win8 (but was curiously removed in Win8.1  ) which probably won't work anyways. I had to search for another solution.

After some searching and reading forum posts (nearly all of which suggested the Microsoft solution) I came across a Geekzone post

I ran into this on two machines. On one it fixed itself after a day or so (which gave me the clue as to the solution that worked for me on the other) and for the other it was obviously caused by a particular old MS application I use, and after some messing around getting nowhere with the MS trouble-shooters and uninstalling and reinstalling the trouble causing application  (uninstalling it fixed the Update problem, reinstalling put the problem back) I instead fixed it by temporarily changing my connection's DNS server addresses to preferred public ones.

For example, go to Control Panel>Network and Internet>Network Connections and right click on the connection you are using and select Properties. On the General tab scroll down to Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and select Properties.

Select Use the Following DNS Server Addresses and enter 4.2.2.1 for Preferred DNS Server and 4.2.2.2 for the Alternative.

Try Windows Update - if it works you will likely find that after updating you can change the DNS servers back to being obtained automatically and Update will be fine thereafter.

Naturally, it didn't work but I did catch some additional information that was, interestingly, missing when using the automated Windows update utility. The ~5MB KB was only downloading about ~2.5 before attempting the install. Either Windows programmers were being lazy at displaying that last little bit or something else was up.

I went back and looked at DISM. It was then that I just happened to come across this post on the Microsoft forum

Just wanted to share with anyone else who was having this issue what it was that I did to resolve it. First off some quick background, this is a brand new HP laptop so was no update over windows 7.
I first had issue updating due to a device issue with an installed HP codec that conflicted with a Windows Codec update, I resolved that and manually updated that single update. Then Windows update failed again. I tried doing the DSIM w/ Restorehealth option as suggested previously in this post, but to no avail.

Some more research led me to the following folder "C:\Windows\servicing\Packages\" in this folder I did a quick search for some of the failing updates KB numbers.. (KB2727528 for example) and sure enough found the following...
Package_for_KB2727528~<blahblah>~6.2.1.0 cat and mum files
Package_1_for_KB2727528~<blahblah>~6.2.1.0 cat and mum files
Package_for_KB2727528_RTM~<blahblah>~6.2.1.0 cat and mum files
Using the following command (note that trying to remove the _1_ or _RTM results in a package not found!):
dism /online /NoRestart /remove-package /packagename:Package_for_KB2727528~<blahblah>~6.2.1.0
and recieved a 100% package removed! No way! Installed just that update and booyaah success, restarting it seemed to stall at 15% but then kept going after a few mins and success.

I then wrote out a batch file to execute the above command for any found package namefor anything that had a KB code in the the Windows Update list and viola all were removed. Windows update then completed successfully!

As my wife pointed out.. what do people who don't know computers/software as well as me do, and I told her they probably take them back for a refund, and she replied this is why people use Macs LOL! Probably true. I hope this helps someone else.

After 20+ years you'd think MS would've finally stopped releasing broken Windows software *sigh*

Doc.

Often times, I wonder if Microsoft hires green programmers for the "tools" offered by microsoft. dism /? actually returned slightly different switches than what the poster was doing. But I figured I would give it a shot.

Looking in that directory, I noted over 50 sets of files related that KB. I should note at this point, that I would like to shoot the brain dead programmer that thought it was a good idea to take a step backwards in the Win8 search function. The XP dog was annoying as ---fudgesicle---, but it has far more search options than Win8 does. The three sets of files (noted above) were far less than 5MB that the update utility was purporting it to be. Compression? probably but that didn't matter, I had 50 different sets of the same KB, clearly something was wrong.

In a nutshell, tried out the DISM flags as suggested and voila! I got the update to install.

Thanks for nothing Microsoft.