Windows 10 update stuck at 0%

I tried a lot of guides from internet to solve this "0% download progress" problem, but without success. What worked for me finally?

  • Download Media Creation Tool from Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows10
  • run it and select "Upgrade this computer" (or you can select "create installable media" (DVD / USB) if you want to make clean installation, but it wasn't my case) - download will start immediately
  • if you get stuck during installation (after downloading) on "checking for updates" message, then open Command prompt as administrator (how to do it) - while installation window 10 is still open and running - and type command: net stop wuauserv. This stops windows update service. After a minute you should see "Checking computer" instead of "checking for updates" in Windows install window and installation goes on...
  • if you get stuck again during next "checking for updates" process, repeat the last step - stop windows update with net stop wuauserv. I had to do it two or three times during "checking for updates".

For anyone else who has this problem here is how I solved it.

First off the whole process was a nightmare. Just letting you know.

I tried a lot of things and it eventually worked. I'm going to list everything I did but my suspicion is the most important thing I did was frequent disk cleanups.

Instead of trying to straight update to windows 10 I updated 8.1 as much as it would let me. I had my HDD partitioned and the C drive only had 150 GB so after a billion windows update failures I figured maybe it would at least speed things up if I reclaimed the other partition. It was during this process that I did a disk cleanup (Had to click on advanced so it would search for more things to delete (e.g. windows update files)). After this windows update FINALLY worked.

If you get it downloaded and it freezes on preparing to install I'd try disk cleanup again and start over.

That was a 657MB download. The next windows update was a 15MB download. This took half a day. By the time it worked I had:

  • turned off automatic updates
  • disabled windows defender
  • disabled all non-microsoft services and apps from running at startup
  • ran troubleshoot > windows update (drag down from top right, type "troubleshoot", click it, click windows update) about 5 times
  • restarted 4 billion times
  • ran disk cleanup (again, i think this is the only thing that did anything). Please note that when it gets around to deleting windows update files that it will freeze. I found that killing the Windows Modules installer worker (windows update) breaks whatever deadlock the computer is in. e.g. the instant you delete it disk cleanup goes from a halt back to normal speed.
  • defragged my hdd (this was after I restored the other partition)

I continued updating until it said I had no more updates to do (even optional). For me this was just another 85 MB update and it worked flawlessly. I never saw that update to windows 10 thing in the taskbar. I just googled "install windows 10" and clicked through the links once it was fully updated and to my surprise it worked (this was a 2 day ordeal).

One final thing to point out is that windows update is garbage. It will sit at "preparing to install" forever. It will download 700MB but leave it's download progress at 0%. It might not let you close it. It might not open when you open it. When I was upgrading from 8 to 8.1 it froze at 62% (permanently froze) and after some googling I found it will start again if you disconnect your internet and then reconnect it.


Check whether the Windows date and Time is set to Automatic and the System Locale to English. Then try to use the Troubleshooter and see if it helps.

This issue might also occur due to corruption in Windows Update component files. I suggest you to reset Windows Update component. Press Windows key + X, select Command prompt (Admin) to bring up elevated Command prompt. Stop the BITS service, the Windows Update service, and the Cryptographic service. To do this, at a command prompt, type the following commands. Make sure that you press Enter after you type each command.

net stop bits
net stop wuauserv
net stop appidsvc
net stop cryptsvc

Rename the software distribution folders backup copies. To do this, at a command prompt, type the following commands. Make sure that you press Enter after you type each command.

Ren %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.bak
Ren %systemroot%\system32\catroot2 catroot2.bak

Restart the BITS service, the Windows Update service, and the Cryptographic service. To do this, at a command prompt, type the following commands. Make sure that you press Enter after you type each command.

net start bits
net start wuauserv
net start appidsvc
net start cryptsvc 
 5. Restart your PC and check if it works this time when you try to update.

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Windows 10 Upgrade

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