The company says it is investigating reports

Feb 5, 2019 05:36 GMT  ·  By

UPDATE: Microsoft says the bug was fixed in late January and explains that bad DNS settings were indeed to blame. You should now wait a few more days until the DNS configuration applies to your Internet connection, after which Windows Update will work normally. Original story below.

Microsoft has just confirmed an issue hitting the Windows Update service, only a few days after it was believed the company released a fix to affected devices.
 

Errors in Windows Update were first reported in late January, as we explained in this January 31 article, users in the United States and the United Kingdom were most often hit by the problem causing the service to fail to check for updates.

Many suggested that changing the DNS settings and switching to Google’s public DNS server did the job and restored Windows Update, with some indicating on January 31 that Microsoft quietly resolved the problem and issued a silent fix.

But as it turns out, the bug is still there and some users are still seeing it, with Microsoft explaining in an update posted on the Windows 10 update history page that it’s now investigating reports.

“We are aware of a service side issue where some customers are still unable to connect or download updates from the Windows Update service. We are actively investigating this issue. Thank you for your patience,” the firm says in a February 4 update.

Questions that need to be answered

What’s odd is that Microsoft says this issue only affects Windows 10 version 1809 (October 2018 Update), as the notification above hasn’t been posted on the page of the other Windows 10 versions.

Previously, it was reported that the glitch impacted all Windows versions, not just Windows 10, and given the DNS settings were believed to be the culprit, this was something to be expected. However, with Microsoft remaining tight-lipped on this particular incident, we can’t tell for sure if the problem was indeed a bad DNS configuration or it just took place on Microsoft’s side.

However, with the February 2019 Patch Tuesday cycle just around the corner, Microsoft should correct the issue as soon as possible, as otherwise, a number of devices may not be able to download the new security updates when they become available the next week.