1. Why does my PC keep rebooting with Windows 10 installed? Download Windows 10 updates manually on Microsoft’s Catalog Update website

QI installed Windows 10 and all was fine for a few days. Then I was told my PC needed to restart following an update, so I let it do so. The update failed, saying it could not complete. My PC then restarted and said again the update needed to be installed. This happened again and again. What’s gone wrong, and is there any way out if this endless reboot loop?

Megan Smalle

AWhat went wrong is Microsoft decided it’d be a good idea to force Windows 10 users to download and install updates – and then promptly issued a faulty update! The offending update is KB3081424 ( www.snipca.com/17656). Should something go wrong during installation the update tries again, compounding the problem.

It hasn’t affected everybody, but there’s nothing you could’ve done to avoid it. Some non-microsoft types figured out a workaround that involved editing the Registry, but this is no longer necessary because Microsoft has fixed the problem with an update. At the time of writing, the latest update is KB3081438.

As with other Windows 10 updates this should install automatically. To hurry it along, click Start, type window update followed by ‘Check for updates’, then click the ‘Check for updates button’.

If the update still isn’t showing as available you should download it manually from Microsoft’s Catalog Update website. Visit www.snipca.com/17658, click the Add button next to the relevant version (for 32bit or 64bit Windows 10), then click ‘view basket’ followed by Download. Doubleclick the downloaded file (with the . msu extension) then follow the prompts. Annoyingly, you’ll need to do all this in Internet Explorer, because the Catalog Update site isn’t yet compatible with Microsoft’s new browser Edge, and doesn’t work in Chrome or Firefox.