This morning I attempted to run Windows Update on two of my Windows 7 PCs (both are virtual machines), and I ran into this interesting pop-up error message. I have never encountered this problem before, so I was somewhat perplexed.

From the message, my first thought was to see if the Windows Update service was running. It was. As usual, the solution is never so simple. I attempted to restart the service and reboot the PCs to no avail.

So, I am off to the interwebs for a solution. I did find a solution to the problem, so I thought to post it for my future reference and for anyone else who may encounter this problem. I will be posting the answer shortly.

If you have alternate solutions that have worked for you, please feel free to leave a post or comment.