Windows update not connecting

Runnerbean said:

@Mystified.

It didn't work for me on IPv4 but it did work eventually on IPv6. I believe there is an error in the tutorial regards the IPv6 numbers, well not the numbers but the dots. It should be entered as:,..

• 2001:4860:4860::8888 Primary
• 2001:4860:4860::8844 Secondary

There is an extra set of dots between the last 4860 and 8844.

So with IPv4 on Automatic DNS and IPv6 as entered above, I finally got my PC to connect and pull down the updates.

OK, didn't know you were using IPv6. My systems are configured for IPv4 only.
However, the answer to the issue remains the same, BT's servers are not resolving the MS update server. Switching to an alternative DNS server - in either IPv4 or IPv6 - is a fix until the issue goes away.
Anyway for now anyone reading this thread has a workable solution - hopefully.
Thanks for the info.

WU auto checked today (02/03/19) at 3:13 PM EST and successfully made contact. Oddly enough it downloaded and installed "Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package: April 12, 2011", KB2538243. I'm on a locally supplied ISP, so no DNS issues.

Windows update for my Windows 10 version 1803 has not been working for the past 5 days. Don't know what has gone wrong. Anxiously waiting for a solution to the problem.

Welcome toTenForums @amlo.

Ye, there was a problem around the update servers that started back then. The problem seems to have been fixed now, but for some ISPs their DNS servers are still holding bad connection data. Many have found that changing the DNS server your PC uses from your ISP's DNS server to the Google ones is a workaround that gets updates working again.


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We couldn't connect to the update service. We'll try again later, or y - Page 2 - Windows 10 Forums

hawkman said:

Another odd thing, It appears the outage affected Ethernet connections more than Wi-fi

I lost it for several days, and all my PCs were on WiFi. One thing I noticed after it came back, machines that had been left running throughout the outage had stopped doing their daily automatic check for updates, even though the manual check now worked again. A Restart was required before normal service would resume.

Skofab said:

Today (on the 'it's been fixed' promise) I went and put the DNS setting back to auto.
This allowed me to resume normal service.
At 1-00am today, I went to manually update - and once again failure with the familiar 'retry later message' appeared.

Once again put in the settings for google DNS, and all was well. It would seem that we are not yet through this problem.

This is probably because the correct DNS name resolutions were in your cache when you switched off google, then later they got flushed out of the cache and bad resolutions were loaded by your ISP's DNS.

Hallelujah, Mine's working now, well at least it is has been today.

samIOW said:

Hallelujah, Mine's working now, well at least it is has been today.

Mine - via BT DNS servers - came back to life sometime late yesterday afternoon / early evening.