If you have a Laptop that is normally attached to your company's Network Domain, you may find that when you are roaming in the field, the Windows Update site does not work. The reason for this is simple. The group policies of your domain force your laptop to obtain its updates from the local network, rather than the internet. However, if you are rarely connected to the domain, this makes checking for optional updates rather difficult. One solution that I found to work is to manually re-register the Windows update components.
Click Start > Run > Type the follow commands in the box (one at a
time, in sequence):
REGSVR32 C:\WINDOWS\system32\wuapi.dll
REGSVR32
C:\WINDOWS\system32\wuauclt.exe
REGSVR32 C:\WINDOWS\system32\wuaueng.dll
REGSVR32 C:\WINDOWS\system32\atl.dll
REGSVR32
C:\WINDOWS\system32\wucltui.dll
REGSVR32 C:\WINDOWS\system32\wups.dll
One of these may not appear to work properly, but nevertheless, the
whole sequence solved the problem for me.