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Question About Automatic Updates


Mike Rochip

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I had trouble downloading updates Tuesday and have since figured it all out but I'm wondering if anyone else has had this happen.

 

I always download the updates manually because I like to see what is being installed and prefer to do it at my convenience since I'm on dialup.

 

This time an error message appeared saying the updates could not be downloaded because one or more of the following services were not running:

 

Automatic Update

Background Intelligent Transfer Service [bITS]

Event Log

 

However all three were running and stopping and restarting them had no effect and neither did rebooting.

 

The issue ended up being that Automatic Update has to be set to Automatic. It did not matter if it was already running or not or stopped and restarted, etc. Microsoft instructs on the error screen that all 3 be set to Automatic. In fact, BITS does not need to be set to Automatic or even running to manually download updates. [Event Log is a required service.]

 

So it appears that the Update site is not really looking to see if the AU service is running or not but is instead trying to force the user to change its setting to Automatic. My guess is that MS prefers Auto Updates to be always on which I can understand but I [and many tweak sites] prefer Manual or Disabled.

 

Just wondering if anyone else had this happen or had trouble downloading this month's updates.

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The only problem I had on Tuesday was the updating was super sloooooow and only downloading at what I'd imagine half speed via MS Updates.

 

I posed the question a few weeks about wondering if Automatic Updates trickled downloads and DjLizard stated it did - hence the reason to fire up IE and visit MS Updates when they release their horde of monthly exploit fixes, well for us dial-up users at least. Something else, be careful having automatic updates set to full automation hence you may end up getting Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications installed unknowingly.

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You're right I couldn't believe how slow it was! Probably a lot of volume which is probably a good thing. With all the warnings people may be taking Updates seriously, which of course they should. I think the site timed out on me a couple times which I think was the wierd error I got after I fixed the first problem.

 

When they download automatically they use Background Intelligent Transfer which loads them using excess bandwidth. Lord knows we dialup users have a whole lot of unused bandwidth!

 

I already have WGA and so far it hasn't caused any problems and supposedly isn't phoning home to MS anymore, at least that's what MS says, lol.

 

Also, when I couldn't get Windows Update to work I tried the WinDiz extension for Firefox and can say that is definitely not the way to go. It doesn't give much info about the updates it is saying are needed and says they're downloaded and installed when apparently they aren't according to Windows Update.

 

@Tarun

 

I pretty much agree with your advice. I learned the hard way about changing service settings. However, if I were to tell you the specs of my PC I would be laughed off the forum. Add that to dialup and it is a real advantage for me to have unnecessary services not running. I actually created a spreadsheet I update whenever a service status is changed either by me or [if it's possible] by a program so I can undo any detrimental changes. I know the tweaking sites can give bad advice especially to the unfortunate user who changes more than one service at a time without checking the impact on the PC.

 

I did re-enable Error Reporting Service because of what you and Dj said though :D .

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Lord knows we dialup users have a whole lot of unused bandwidth!

 

Although meant to be funny there is unused bandwidth (albeit I wouldn't say allot for us dial-up users), for instance when reading a webpage that takes some seconds to some minutes thus the bandwidth isn't being used. However that "Background Intelligent Transfer" is slower than anything I've ever seen, at least on dial-up it is.

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I have my updates set to automatic but sometimes, as happened today, I go to updates ( because they didn't come on Tuesday) and it told me I had 9, I clicked to download. When it had finished it said the download had failed. On scrolling down it said one of the reasons for failures could be they were waiting to be installed on my computer, and then the little yellow shield came up, and I installed them.

 

Support contact

https://support.ccleaner.com/s/contact-form?language=en_US&form=general

or

support@ccleaner.com

 

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That's the reason I have automatic updates set to notify instead of being fully automatic because I've seen far too many times where the updates fail to install, and being on dial-up I don't have the patience to keep re-downloading the updates. When automatic updates notifies me of an update I launch IE and visit MS Updates which has only failed to install two updates over the last three years which of course I had to download manually from MS Downloads.

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Just used ccleaner and these are on it to be cleaned ( today's update logs) I haven't noticed this before after an update, is this normal?

 

C:\WINDOWS\KB917422.log 11.63KB

C:\WINDOWS\KB918899.log 20.31KB

C:\WINDOWS\KB920214.log 17.54KB

C:\WINDOWS\KB920670.log 11.47KB

C:\WINDOWS\KB920683.log 12.05KB

C:\WINDOWS\KB921398.log 17.91KB

C:\WINDOWS\KB922616.log 17.53KB

 

Support contact

https://support.ccleaner.com/s/contact-form?language=en_US&form=general

or

support@ccleaner.com

 

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I use have mine set to "Notify me but don't automatically download or install them".

I want to have control of exactly what is downloaded, when it is downloaded, why it is downloaded, from where it is downloaded.

 

Noway, that I am gonna have WGA or WGA Notifications on my computer.

 

I really wish there was some to run the automatic updates software on-demand, such as "auto_update.exe /checknow" or something.

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Eld: I thought we already went through this in another thread....

 

http://forum.ccleaner.com/index.php?showtopic=5832

 

specifically, http://forum.ccleaner.com/index.php?s=&amp...ost&p=42948

Click here if CCleaner Issues are re-appearing

 

DjLizard.net

DjLizard.net wiki

Dial-a-fix

Dial-a-fix tips

DjLizard.net software support forum

 

Do you live in Bradenton, Sarasota, Tampa, or St. Petersburg, Florida? Visit Digital Doctors where I work :)

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Just used ccleaner and these are on it to be cleaned ( today's update logs) I haven't noticed this before after an update, is this normal?

 

C:\WINDOWS\KB917422.log 11.63KB

C:\WINDOWS\KB918899.log 20.31KB

C:\WINDOWS\KB920214.log 17.54KB

C:\WINDOWS\KB920670.log 11.47KB

C:\WINDOWS\KB920683.log 12.05KB

C:\WINDOWS\KB921398.log 17.91KB

C:\WINDOWS\KB922616.log 17.53KB

 

Those are just text files that are created when the updates are installed. If the updates went OK then they are safe to remove. If an update failed they can contain info as to what the issue was.

 

As a side note I have found that there is a ton of useful info in log files that you would normally never see. If you do a search for *.log files you'll be amazed at what you can learn about your computer and its contents by what's contained in them.

 

Also, if I notice log files to be cleaned when Ccleaner is run I often look at them first [open in Notepad] because it indicates a change or an issue with the application that generated the log. Often it's not an indication of a problem, but the few times it is it's worth knowing about.

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