How to Reset Windows Update in Windows 11

Windows Update is a vital component of the Windows operating system that automates downloading and installing software updates over the internet. It could be the latest feature updates, hotfixes, and drivers released by Microsoft.

Sometimes Windows Updates service might not work as expected or you face issues while using it. For example fails to download and install updates, gives you error messages, unable to search new updates, is unable to restore updates, and even more.

How to Reset Windows Update in Windows 11

Usually, this kind of issue occurs when some services related to Windows updates are not running and more over Windows Update components are corrupted.

Contents show

How to Reset Windows Update in Windows 11 using a .bat script

The nifty solution to fix most of the issues related to Windows updates is to reset Windows Update components. In this blog post, you will learn the easiest solution to do that:

Keep a few things in mind:

You need to be logged in as an administrator on Windows 11 PC
Resetting the Windows Update component won’t delete the update history

Download Reset Windows update script for Windows 11 using this link (courtesy of Shawn Brink from Eleven forum)

Extract the zip file to obtain the .bat file.

Ublock the .bat file. For that, right-click on the file and select Properties. Here, check the box for Unblock, then click Apply and OK.

Double-click to run .bat file and when UAC dialog box appears, click Yes to continue.

This will launch the Command prompt window and start resetting the Windows Update components.

reset windows update component in windows 11

Once resetting Windows Update components is done, you will see a message i.e. ” Please save and close anything open now, before the computer is restarted” and hit enter to continue.

Once again press any key and this will instantly restart your computer.

After a successful restart tries to use the Windows Update service and this time it should work as expected.

So what this .bat script does?

Once you run the Windows update component .bat file it will do the following things:

The newer download folder will be created by removing the older one, where updates are downloaded by the Windows update service.
Reset network connection
Reset BITS service
Re-register the Windows update files.

Check the content of .bat file

@echo off

:: Prompt to Run as administrator
Set "Variable=0" & if exist "%temp%\getadmin.vbs" del "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
fsutil dirty query %systemdrive%  >nul 2>&1 && goto :(Privileges_got)
If "%1"=="%Variable%" (echo. &echo. Please right-click on the file and select &echo. "Run as administrator". &echo. Press any key to exit. &pause>nul 2>&1& exit)
cmd /u /c echo Set UAC = CreateObject^("Shell.Application"^) : UAC.ShellExecute "%~0", "%Variable%", "", "runas", 1 > "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"&cscript //nologo "%temp%\getadmin.vbs" & exit
:(Privileges_got)

:: Checking and Stopping the Windows Update services
set b=0