I’ve been having some problems with Windows Update not working properly, but not returning any error messages. The scan would start, stay at 0% for a few seconds, and then display the message ‘Windows Update has encountered an error and cannot display the requested page.’

After spending a couple of hours looking for a solution and trying lots of different things, including clearing cache, deleting some system folders, deleting some system files, stopping and restarting services, etc, I came across a forum post suggesting re-installing the Windows Update Agent.

This solved the problem!

I’ve had similar issues on other machines in the past, with Windows Update not working, though the updates would download fine; they just wouldn’t install.  Re-installing the Windows Update Agent on these machines also fixed these issues.

If you’re having any issues with Windows Update, the first thing to try is re-installing this as it seems to fix a lot of the issues.

Download it here:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=43264 (x86)
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=43265 (x64)

Once downloaded, run the following command:

WindowsUpdateAgent20-x86.exe /wuforce

Reinstallation takes a couple of minutes, after which you should be able to run Windows Update again without any problems.