Possible to clear Windows 10 update cache?

[dr.stevil]

I have Office 2007 installed on my Laptop running Windows 10. Since installing it, I've had an update show up under Windows Update for MS Office (Service Pack 3). Anytime that I've tried to update it via Windows Update, it fails with Error code 0x80246008.

After a lot of annoyance and frustration trying to figure out the issue, I decided to say screw it and install Service Pack 3 manually via the microsoft website which worked perfectly fine. Since then, however, Windows Update is still showing the update and I can't get it to clear.

Is there a way to purge the list of updates that need to be installed? This is preventing me from checking for updates from microsoft. I've unchecked "install updates for other microsoft software"... not sure what else I can do besides trying to uninstall Office and re-installing it (or reinstalling Windows 10)

 

[DejaWiz]

Did a fresh install of Win10 on my laptop and it, too, has the problem of updates either hanging or giving error messages.

I followed this step-by-step and it works. You may have to do it each time an update hangs/thrown an EM. Be sure to follow it exactly...especially the part about having to reboot, disable the services again, and delete the cache files if they don't fully delete on the first attempt.

 

[DejaWiz]

Was this a viable fix for you?

I was hoping MS would have addressed this with a patch by now, as I had to do it again 2 days ago. This is one of the very few things I don't like about Win10, but overall it's a very decent OS and quite a worthy successor to Win7 for a gaming rig or for everyday home web/email use.

 

[cyclone3d]

That is an overly complicated guide. I just have a batch file that I run as admin with these commands in it.

net stop wuauserv
cd /d %windir%
rd /s SoftwareDistribution
net start wuauserv

PAUSE

No reboot is even necessary.

Works for everything from XP to 10.

Now there are other things that can go wrong with Windows Update, the most frequent one is when a bunch of updates are there and they all keep failing.

When that happens, it can generally be fixed by installing a few at a time until they are all installed.