Windows update on windows 7 laptop will not work

Question

Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer.
I am receiving the above message every time I click the ' check for updates' icon. Restarting does not resolve the problem.
I have trawled the internet and found a solution that worked for several people- going to services.msc, closing windows update,
deleting files in c:\windows\software distribution, reopening windows update through services.msc- however this has not resolved the issue for me.
Under systems.msc it is listed as started, automatic (delayed)
The Background Intelligence Transfer service is the same. I have checked the profiles of both programs and there are no discrepancies.
I have used the microsoft fix it program. No effect
Please help!

Answer 1

Installing the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver was THE fix for me as well.  I had spent many hours on this today trying to resolve the following errors:
Windows Update could not get updates because "the
service was not running" (even though Windows Update and the BITS services and others
were in fact running). 
Also Windows Defender Service could not start.  I opened the Windows Defender Control Panel applet, it told me it was stopped, I clicked on the Turn On button, while at the same time I monitored the services app (command prompt - services.msc). 
I watched the status of Windows Defender service.  It kept changing from Stopped to Started just for a second or so, then the service would immediately stop again.  In Control Panel, Windows Defender finally timed out
with the same error listed by amerianz:  Error 0x8e5e0247: 0x8e5e0247
I tried many things from different search results for these 2 issues.  Among other things, after I disabled Antivirus, I stopped WUAUSERV and BITS, renamed Windows\SoftwareDistribution then restarted.  I tried a Windows Update
FixIt on the Microsoft FixIt center.  It said it found and fixed Windows Update issues, but no change.  I tried running SFC /SCANNOW from command prompt. The log said it found corrupted files but this made no difference.
Finally after installing the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver, my PC immediately found new hardware and installed a driver.  Note: before installing this driver, all hardware listed in
Device Manager already had drivers installed.  I was then prompted to reboot.  After rebooting, Windows Update still had a red X and could
not check for updates.  So I opened the Windows Defender Control Panel applet, which showed that updates were available.  This meant of course that the Windows Defender service had started successfully.  I then clicked on the
Check for Updates button on Windows Defender, and after several seconds while Windows Defender was looking for updates, I noticed that the
Windows Update icon had appeared in the system tray and Windows was downloading new updates.  Both issues fixed.  Many thanks.