Protect Yourself From Tech Support Scams
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July 29, 2020
Protect Yourself From Tech Support Scams
Tech support scams are an industry-wide issue where scammers trick you into paying for unnecessary
technical support services. You can help protect yourself from scammers by verifying that the contact is a
Microsoft Agent or
Microsoft Employee and that the phone number is an
official
Microsoft global customer service number.
Windows 8.1 - Windows Update stuck at "checking for updates"
Hi. I see this issue has been brought up by many people. I've tried applying as many suggested methods to fix the issue as I could find on the Microsoft.com site, but so far nothing has worked. I bought the Windows 8.1 Pro full disk, formatted my old hard
drive, installed it on there, and the updates were working fine. However, that hard drive had an issue that I couldn't seem to fix, so I purchased a new hard drive. I installed Windows 8.1 on the new hard drive without any problems. The very first thing I
tried to do on here is apply Windows Updates, but it just keeps "checking for updates" even when I leave it on overnight. My internet is working, of course, since I am using it to post here. I thought maybe there was an issue with the Windows 8.1 installation
on the new hard drive, so I formatted it and reinstalled Win8.1 again. The same problem is still happening with Windows Update. I ran the Update troubleshooter, and it detects problems and claims to have fixed them, but it still keeps "Checking for Updates."
I formatted my new hard drive again, and reinstalled Windows. It took a few hours of testing to figure out what the problem was. Long story short, the Windows installation would get stuck at one point every time. It only happened on my new hard drive. If
I tried a force restart, Windows would start up fine but Windows Update would not work. I was trying to split the hard drive into two partitions. After trying to install on a halved partition, I figured I'd just try not making a partition. I don't know what
the heck the problem could be with partitions (other than the hard drive is faulty), but the installation FINALLY went through completely normally. Windows Update works just as it should.
Thanks for all your help!
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