[Important Fix] Windows 7 With No (or Incompatible) Antivirus Not Receiving New Updates

Attention Windows 7 users! We are going to share very important information for all Windows 7 users. If you don’t have any 3rd party antivirus or security suite program installed in your computer or if you have an incompatible antivirus (which we’ll describe later in this article) in your Windows 7 computer, your computer will NOT receive any update from Microsoft. In other words, Windows 7 without any antivirus program or with an incompatible antivirus program installed will stop downloading any future update released from Microsoft via Windows Update.

If you are using Windows 7 and if you were wondering why suddenly your computer stopped receiving new updates starting from January 2018, this article will solve this mystery.

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION

You have Windows 7 installed in your computer and it is not downloading any new update from Windows Update. Even if you manually check for new updates, it doesn’t detect any new update. It always shows no important updates available.

It started happening from January 2018. So basically your Windows 7 computer is at risk as its not downloading new security updates released by Microsoft.

It happens if you don’t have any antivirus program or have an incompatible antivirus program installed in your computer.

PROBLEM REASON

This problem started happening since January 2018 when Microsoft released security updates for Windows 7 operating system to fix Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities.

When those updates were installed by Windows 7 operating system, many users reported BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) problems. Their computers were unable to start Windows 7 after installing those new updates.

Microsoft investigated the issue and found that the problem occurred on those Windows 7 computers which were having incompatible antivirus programs. The compatibility issue existed in a few antivirus programs which were making unsupported calls into Windows kernel memory which resulted into BSOD problems and the computers were unable to boot.

Microsoft pulled the security updates immediately and after some time the updates were released again but with some changes. The change was the inclusion of a registry key check.

Now the security updates detect a particular key in Registry which must be created by 3rd party antivirus programs to assure Windows 7 that the installed antivirus program is compatible. If the key is found in Registry, Windows 7 downloads and installs new updates. If the key is not found in Registry, Windows 7 won’t download the updates.

Those security updates were released in January 2018, that’s why all Windows 7 machines without that particular registry key are not receiving any new updates.

Since Windows 7 doesn’t come with any antivirus program installed, the registry key is not present by default. So if you are not using any antivirus program, you’ll also not receive any new updates from Microsoft.

Many 3rd party antivirus companies have updated their antivirus program to create the registry key so that Windows 7 computers containing their antivirus program can receive new updates from Microsoft but still a few antivirus programs don’t create the registry key which makes them incompatible.

So the bottom line is that if you are using Windows 7 without any antivirus program or with an incompatible antivirus program, your computer will stop receiving new updates from Microsoft.

PROBLEM SOLUTION

The solution is very simple! If you don’t have an antivirus program installed in your Windows 7 computer, install a good antivirus immediately in your computer. If you already have an antivirus program but still not receiving new updates, it means your antivirus program is incompatible and you need to switch to a compatible antivirus program.

There are many free and good antivirus programs available such as Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), avast!, AVG, Kaspersky, etc. You can download these antivirus and anti-spyware programs from following topic:

Download Best Free Antivirus and Anti-Spyware Software for Windows

These antivirus programs are compatible with Windows 7 and automatically create the required registry key. So once you install these antivirus programs, your computer will start receiving new updates from Microsoft.

BUT If you don’t want to install any 3rd party antivirus program (which is not recommended) and want to use the built-in Windows Defender program only, these is also a way to keep receiving new updates from Microsoft.

You’ll need to manually create the required key in Registry to force Windows 7 to start downloading new updates via Windows Update.

You can create the required key using following steps:

1. Press “WIN+R” key combination to launch RUN dialog box then type regedit and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to following key:

3. Under “CurrentVersion” key, create a new key and set its name as QualityCompat

4. Now select the new QualityCompat key and in right-side pane, right click and select “New -> DWORD (32-bit) value” option.

5. Set the name of new DWORD as cadca5fe-87d3-4b96-b7fb-a231484277cc

Keep the value of the new DWORD as 0

That’s it. Restart your computer and check for new updates in Windows Update. It’ll take a few minutes and will start receiving new updates without any problem.

PS: We’ll advise to install a good antivirus program which will automatically create the registry key and will also protect your computer.

NOTE: If you are not familiar with Registry editing and want a ready-made Registry script to do the task automatically, download following ZIP file, extract it and run the extracted REG file. It’ll ask for confirmation, accept it:

This ready-made registry script will create the required registry key automatically.

FURTHER READ:

If your Windows 7 keeps checking for new updates for hours and hours, following tutorials will help you in fixing this issue:

[Fix] Windows 7 Keeps Checking for Updates for Hours

[Fix] Windows Updates Fail to Install With Error Code 0x8000FFFF in Windows 7