Earlier this month, some Windows 10 users complained that Windows Update stopped working on their PCs and they couldn’t download any new updates. The users were unable to gain access to the Windows Update service and Microsoft Store also failed to download any new updates.
The issue was acknowledged by Microsoft earlier this month and the company confirmed that the outage was experienced due to issues with external DNS providers. In an update to its support document, Microsoft has now confirmed that the Windows Update issues have been addressed and everything should be back online.
In case Windows Update is still not working for you, Microsoft recommends users to contact their ISPs.
“Windows Update customers were recently affected by a network infrastructure event caused by an external DNS service provider’s global outage. A software update to the external provider’s DNS servers resulted in the distribution of corrupted DNS records that affected connectivity to the Windows Update service. The DNS records were restored by January 30, 2019 (00:10 UTC), but downstream effects continued. We believe the issue to be fully mitigated because the majority of local Internet Service Providers (ISP) have refreshed their DNS servers and customer services have been restored. If you are still encountering download failures, please contact your local ISP,” Microsoft explains.
“While this was not an issue with Microsoft’s services, we take any service disruption for our customers seriously. We will work with partners to better understand this so we can provide higher quality service in the future even across diverse global network providers,” the company explains.
As noted above, Microsoft has confirmed that the service-side issue has been fixed and Windows Update should be back online.