Expiry date error breaks Windows Update for Windows 7

Users are reporting issues with Windows Update in Windows 7 and it appears the culprit is that Microsoft forgot to change an expiration date. Computerworld says Windows 7 users are now greeted with the message "Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running."

Reports are piling in from afar that Windows Update in Win7 is broken. My first sighting was late Sunday afternoon, when KarenS posted on the AskWoody Lounge:

When I clicked on the Windows Update icon today to start the updates it said that my computer was up to date and that there were no updates available which I know was not the truth because I hadn’t installed any of the [recent ones]

A similar issue affected Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 in 2014, it was caused by letting "ExpiryDate" pass without updating it. Until Microsoft rolls out an official fix, users can regain access to Windows Update by setting the date back a couple of days, to a system date older than December 3, 2017.