Windows 10 says updates have failed when they actually haven't

Hi all,

This is my first post here, so thanks in advance to all who take the time to read and to try and help with stuff on here :)

So, having been a Vista user for many years, I recently acquired a brand new Asus n551jx laptop, which came with Windows 8.1 preinstalled. After having numerous issues out of the box with the 8.1 setup provided, I decided it was easier to just do a clean install of Windows 10 rather than spend weeks wrangling with Asus' awful tech support.

I did a clean install of Windows 10 from DVD and the installation and activation went without a hitch (shock!). After being initially impressed by how clean and stable Win 10 appeared, this turned to disappointment when I realised that I only had a generic screen driver, no sound and was missing system tray icons for the NVIDIA card, bluetooth, etc. I was facing up to the prospect of spending hours manually installing these when I decided to run Windows Update and see what happened. I was pleasantly surprised to see it listed pretty much all the drivers i needed (including some ASUS ones, which I'd never have expected) along with a few Windows updates, and so I set them to download while I contiuned to tinker with my new setup.

Over time, I noticed that the display drivers and others were installed in real time as I was using the system, but when I checked on Windows Update it said 'waiting for install' next to said drivers, which I thought was odd. Once all the updates had downloaded, I then ended up doing several restarts, as each time it would install, then say some had failed, then say it needed to restart again.

Once all this had finished, I looked at the update history and was suprised to see that about 80% of them (roughly 20 in total) say 'failed to install', most of these being drivers. The strange thing is that they all appear to have installed just fine. I've checked on Device Manager and all of the drivers are present and there's no issues listed with any of them. The updates in question are now gone from Windows Update, too.

Should I be concerned about this? I wonder if perhaps the issue has occurred because the drivers were installed in real time, and then Windows couldn't install them during reboot as they were already in place, hence the 'failure'. Still, seems odd that Windows didn't take this into account. Is this a known issue with the early builds of Windows 10 (given that the system would not have applied any Windows updates when this happened)? When I look at the list of installed updates, it just shows the standard Windows updates/security fixes, which all installed without a hitch.

Keen to hear your input!

Hello nmb and welcome to the TenForums!

I think you did a wise move with the clean install and hope that you enjoy W10. I think that if all your updates and drivers are now installed and working you do not need to worry. I have had times when there are so many updates required that some do fail while others are still installing and the restarts are a good way to get it all sorted. One very useful view is the reliability history view and this will show you the history of all your updates and driver installs. You will be amazed just how much does go on in the background. To view this type reliability in the search box and select View reliability history.