Windows 7 Won't Update After Reformat

Desperate here and hoping someone can help me. I know just enough about computers to help my family when they have a crisis. This time I think it's over my head.

My dad has a Dell Inspiron M5110 laptop. It has Windows 7 Home Premium and is a 64 bit. It came from Walmart and was a Christmas gift a few years ago.

He is very good about running all his maintenance and uses Webroot Secure Anywhere as his virus protection.

He told me it started having problems running Webroot and would no longer finish a scan. He said he was also having problems with email (Windows Live Mail through Cox) and using Facebook.

So he brought it to me. Webroot showed that a scan had never been run but he said he knows it did complete before. It would stop at 67%, start again and freeze up at 71% to never go further. I uninstalled and reinstalled the program. No change.

I decided to reformat the computer. I used the disks we purchased from Dell right after he got the computer. The operating system disk includes Service Pack 1. There is also a disk for drivers and utilities.

After reformatting, the computer will NOT do a Windows Update. I even did a second reformat and chose the option to not keep the old files. I checked online for a tutorial regarding the order to install the drivers and such. I did it in the order recommended (as far as I could understand).

Still will not do a Windows Update. I have tried all this to remedy:

1. Validated that it is a genuine Windows product and now says it's activated.

2. Changed from auto update to never, rebooted, changed back to auto, rebooted.

3. Installed Internet Explorer 11.

All this has been done while using an ethernet cord. Not doing wireless and I have high speed internet.

Does anyone have any suggestions? My dad cannot afford to pay someone to do this or buy a new computer. I'm lost.

Thanks so much for any input.

 

I would start out by burning a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD, which is available for download from majorgeeks. After burning the CD ROM on another computer boot it in your father's machine and under the heading memory, you will find a program called memtest.

It's always good to rule out hardware first, as things like a failing hard drive will cause issues, or bad bits on the RAM sticks can cause data to be erroneously written to the hard drive.

When running memtest any red is bad.

 

Thank you so much. Sorry for the delay in response, was out of pocket all day.

I will try doing this. Wow... I am going to go start reading all this website and forums. I believe you all have a wealth of info to share here and it is much appreciated. A friend recommended you and now I know why.

 

Sounds like a possible HardDiskDrive or RAM problem but first would check to be sure system time and date are correct. Laptop looks to be about four years old but last BIOS update for it was in 2014. My first thought was SP1 but you state that is included on the install disc. Could also be a problem with a service not running or needing to be cycled, turned off and then on which you did with WindowsUpdate. No error code given I imagine. WindowsRepair, available here on majorgeeks might make it an easy fix. Of course you can run chkdsk c:/r and possibly a systemfilecheck also to see if they throw up any red flags.

 

Thank you Bugballou. Planning to tackle this either today or tomorrow when I can block off some uninterrupted time.

I appreciate all the help offered. These are all things I didn't know to try to do.

 

Thank you Bugballou! After running WindowsRepair and fixing the problems it found, I was then able to finally get the Microsoft Updater tool to work. (Sorry I don't remember the correct name of the tool, it is one that comes up when searching for error codes when Windows updates fail). Then I was able to finally start the updates and complete them.

My dad now has his computer back and is enjoying it. I installed several programs recommended by majorgeeks.com and showed him how to use them.

Again, thank you very much from both my dad and myself.