New Problems Starting Dell Support Assist and Dell Update

Question

I've been having problems with Dell Update and the updating feature of Support Assist for over a year now. Dell Update hangs up and never gets past the splash screen. Support Assist can successfully run a hardware scan and check for updates but does not provide a way to install them, so I think it's hanging too, just in a more elegant way. I'm running Windows 10 Home and 3.13.0.236 of support assist. I can't tell you what version of Dell update I'm running because it never actually starts, but Windows Control Panels says 4.2.1 was installed in February of 2022. There are posts all over this board and the internet in general from people having to deal with this. They generally get pointed to a YouTube video made a year ago.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxUAuMMtgLw) Until recently,  the workaround in the video of deleting the 'Clients' folder in the \ProgramData\Dell\UpdateService folder and then restarting the Dell Client Management Service immediately before running Dell Update worked for me. Now, when I try to delete the Clients folder, I get a Windows error stating I don't currently have permission to access this folder. Windows asks me to click 'Continue' to permanently get access to this folder. ('Continue' has a little administrator icon by it). Doing this brings up another error 'You have been denied permission to access this folder. To gain access to this folder you will need to use the security tab' (link). When I click that link, I get sent to the security tab of the UpdateService folder properties. A message 'You must have Read permissions to view the properties of this object, Click Advance to continue' comes up. When I click 'Advance' a box called 'Advanced Security Settings' pops up. There is a permissions tab activated and on this tab is the message 'You must have Read permissions to view the properties of this object, Click Continue to attempt the operation with administrative permissions'. Again, a button that says 'Continue' with an administrator icon next to it is presented. When I click 'Continue', the tab populates with a list of permissions, but all options to edit them are grayed out. I did notice that Administrators had access called 'Special'. When I click view permissions, the screen below is displayed. Note everything is grayed out. When I click 'Close' (the only option from this screen) the Windows error saying I don't have permission to access the folder returns and the process repeats. This defies reason. I have always administrative rights to this machine. I even ran the command prompt as an administrator and tried to access the folder using the old 'cd' command and that failed too. You've literally locked me out of MY OWN MACHINE. Not even a Windows Administrator can change it. Other posts say to check your .NET core versions and that 5.0.17 must be one of the installed versions. ('Or later' left out on purpose because there is no backwards compatibility for the fix.) I checked and I have 5.0.17 installed but also 6.0.9, which I had to install a couple of months ago to make another application work. I'm thinking that upgrading 6.0.9 caused this permission issue but I've not been able to prove that to myself. So here I sit dead in the water AGAIN. This has been such a fiasco. I've bought Dell computers exclusively for over a decade (paying more than other brands)  because of their durability and performance over the long term as well as a personal commitment to support US-based companies, especially those based in my home state with CEOs from my alma mater. I bought Dell stock for these same reasons. I cannot believe this is the best that the fine people of Dell can come up with to keep their user's machines up-to-date, a critical aspect to digital security. (I'm not being sarcastic, I know several people who work there, every one of them is brilliant.) Please help me and the thousands of other people having this issue. The hoops through which we must jump to keep a machine up-to-date are ridiculous. It should be simple because this is vital to security in today's world.

UTxEng · Accepted Answer

Using the process provided on another board, I think I just fixed it. I uninstalled the MS Visual C++ Runtime Modules, Rebooted, Uninstalled Dell Update, Dell Support Assist, Dell Support Assist Remediation, Dell Support Assist Client Plugin, and rebooted again. Then, I installed the 2015-2022 MS Visual C++ Runtime Modules, rebooted and then installed a new Dell Update App. I just ran Dell Update and successfully updated my system. I did not need to execute the workaround. Fingers crossed it stays like this.

Inspiron

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