If you tend to tweak your machine a bit, chances are that you’ve ventured into the running services and disabled a few here and there that you didn’t think you needed. As a result, you may have gotten an error message on the Windows Update site that reads:

The site cannot continue because one or more of these Windows services is not running:

- Automatic Updates (allows the site to find, download and install high-priority updates for your computer)
- Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) (helps updates download more quickly and without problems if the download process is interrupted)
- Event Log (keeps a record of updating activities to help with troubleshooting, if needed)

Most of the time, the issue is that the Automatic Update service is set to disabled or manual instead of automatic. So, to change this, go to the services window by going to “Start” > “Run” and type: services.msc

Locate the “Automatic Updates” service, right click on it and click “properties”. Change the Startup Type to “Automatic” and hit the “Start” button if the service isn’t already running, as stated by the “Service status”. You should now be able to refresh the Windows Update page and continue on to checking for Windows updates.