After an improper shutdown, crash, something gone wrong with your Registry or power failure, Windows Update can fail to work properly. It may fail to check for updates or fail to install them, or sometimes, it cannot be opened at all. In this article, I will show you how to reset the state of Windows Update and its components if it stops working.
How to reset the state of Windows Update and its components
Start by opening the command prompt as administrator. The best way to perform this on Windows 8 is the Power Users Menu: press Win+X keys on the keyboard and choose the "Command Prompt (Admin)" item.
- Stop the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) and the Windows Update service. To stop these services, type the following commands in the elevated command prompt:
net stop bits net stop wuauserv
- Delete all qmgr*.dat files from the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Network\Downloader folder, e.g. with the following command:
Del "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Network\Downloader\qmgr*.dat"
- Now you should rename directories which are used by Windows Update as follows:
Ren %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution *.bak Ren %systemroot%\system32\catroot2 *.bak
- Re-register all files which are requried by BITS and Windows Update services. You need to type the following commands:
cd /d %windir%\system32 regsvr32.exe atl.dll regsvr32.exe urlmon.dll regsvr32.exe mshtml.dll regsvr32.exe shdocvw.dll regsvr32.exe browseui.dll regsvr32.exe jscript.dll regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll regsvr32.exe scrrun.dll regsvr32.exe msxml.dll regsvr32.exe msxml3.dll regsvr32.exe msxml6.dll regsvr32.exe actxprxy.dll regsvr32.exe softpub.dll regsvr32.exe wintrust.dll regsvr32.exe dssenh.dll regsvr32.exe rsaenh.dll regsvr32.exe gpkcsp.dll regsvr32.exe sccbase.dll regsvr32.exe slbcsp.dll regsvr32.exe cryptdlg.dll regsvr32.exe oleaut32.dll regsvr32.exe ole32.dll regsvr32.exe shell32.dll regsvr32.exe initpki.dll regsvr32.exe wuapi.dll regsvr32.exe wuaueng.dll regsvr32.exe wuaueng1.dll regsvr32.exe wucltui.dll regsvr32.exe wups.dll regsvr32.exe wups2.dll regsvr32.exe wuweb.dll regsvr32.exe qmgr.dll regsvr32.exe qmgrprxy.dll regsvr32.exe wucltux.dll regsvr32.exe muweb.dll regsvr32.exe wuwebv.dll
Note: some commands may report errors, do not pay attention to them.
- Restart the Winsock service, as follows:
netsh reset winsock
- Start BITS and Windows Update services:
net start bits net start wuauserv
- Clean up the Background transfers queue:
bitsadmin.exe /reset /allusers
- Reboot your PC. That's all.
Support us
Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options:
Hi – thanks for this post. When I try deleting the qmgr.dat files using this:
Del “%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Network\Downloader\qmgr*.dat”
I received the following:
Could Not Find C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Network\Downloader\qmgr*.dat
Any idea why this is and how it can be remediated?
Thanks.
This means you have no files there.
So, you can ignore that step.