Windows Update Stuck? 9 Ways to Get It Moving Again

What “stuck” actually means

Not every slow update is a stuck update — and jumping in too early can cause the very corruption you’re trying to avoid. Here’s how to tell the difference:

• Probably fine, just slow: The percentage creeps up slowly, the hard drive light blinks, or Task Manager shows disk/CPU activity from TiWorker.exe or TrustedInstaller. Feature updates (the big twice-yearly ones) legitimately take 30–90 minutes on an SSD and several hours on a hard drive. The progress bar lying to you at “99%” for 20 minutes? Totally normal — the final phase does a ton of work without updating the number. I’ve watched an update sit at 99% for 40 minutes and then finish perfectly. Patience really is step zero here.
• Actually stuck: The percentage hasn’t budged for 2+ hours with zero disk activity. The update fails and rolls back to the same version over and over. You see the same error code (like 0x800f0922, 0x80070002, or 0x80240034) on every attempt. Or the PC is trapped in an “Undoing changes” / reboot loop.
• Stuck at boot: “Getting Windows ready — Don’t turn off your computer” for hours. Drive light active? Wait. No activity for 3+ hours? A forced shutdown followed by the fixes below is acceptable — Windows is built to roll back safely from an interrupted update.

9 fixes, in order of least to most invasive

1. Start with the basics: free up disk space and unplug extras. Updates need working room — Microsoft recommends at least 10 GB free, and feature updates want more like 20–30 GB. Open Settings > System > Storage and run Cleanup recommendations. Also unplug non-essential USB devices (printers, external drives, docks) before retrying — driver conflicts with peripherals are a documented cause of update hangs, especially the dreaded “stuck at 99%.”
2. Next, run the Windows Update troubleshooter. Go to Settings > System > Troubleshoot > Other troubleshooters and click Run next to Windows Update. It checks the update services, resets stuck download states, and repairs the most common failure modes on its own. Honestly, the built-in troubleshooter is hit or miss — but when it works, it saves you the rest of this list. Restart afterward and check for updates again.
3. If that didn’t do it, restart the update services manually. Sometimes the Background Intelligent Transfer Service or the Windows Update service itself gets wedged. Open an admin Terminal (Win + X > Terminal (Admin)) and run:

   net stop wuauserv
   net stop bits
   net stop cryptsvc
   net start cryptsvc
   net start bits
   net start wuauserv

   Then head to Settings > Windows Update and click Check for updates.

4. Now the heavy hitter: clear the SoftwareDistribution cache. This deletes the folder where Windows stores downloaded (and possibly corrupted) update files, forcing a clean re-download. In admin Terminal:

   net stop wuauserv
   net stop bits
   ren C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.old
   net start wuauserv
   net start bits

   Check for updates again. The re-download takes a while depending on your connection — but corrupted partial downloads are one of the top causes of repeating failures, and this wipes them out.

5. Still failing? Run SFC and DISM to repair system files. Corrupted system files can block updates from installing. In admin Terminal, run:

   sfc /scannow

   Let it finish (10–20 minutes), then run:

   DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

   That second command pulls clean replacement files from Windows Update itself. After both complete, restart and retry the update.

6. Try the oddly effective one: pause, then resume updates. In Settings > Windows Update, click Pause for 1 week, restart the PC, then come back and click Resume updates. This resets the update orchestrator’s state and sometimes clears whatever deadlock was blocking progress. Simple — but it works more often than it should.
7. Bypass the broken part: install the update manually from the Microsoft Update Catalog. Find the failing update’s KB number in Settings > Windows Update > Update history (it looks like KB5034765). Go to catalog.update.microsoft.com in your browser, search for that KB number, download the version matching your system (x64 for most PCs), and run the .msu file. Manual installs skip the entire download-and-orchestration pipeline where most stalls happen.
8. For stubborn feature updates, use the Windows 11 Installation Assistant or Media Creation Tool. Microsoft’s Windows 11 Installation Assistant (on microsoft.com’s Windows 11 download page) performs the upgrade directly and keeps your files and apps. It’s effectively a repair install — and it resolves update problems that survive everything above.
9. Last resort before a clean install: do an in-place upgrade repair. Mount a Windows 11 ISO (download it from Microsoft), run setup.exe from inside Windows, and choose Keep personal files and apps. This reinstalls Windows over itself, replacing every system component — including the broken update machinery — while your data and programs stay put. Set aside an hour or two.