status report asks me to run update.php but getting 'no pending updates'
Go to systam.module and check for if (max($updates) &gt; $default) { line after this add dpm($module) you will get to know which module prevents this database update and fix that module accordingly. The code will look like below:

if (max($updates) &gt; $default) {
   dpm($module);
   $requirements['update']['severity'] = REQUIREMENT_ERROR;
   $requirements['update']['value'] = $t('Out of date');
   $requirements['update']['description'] = $t('Some modules have database schema updates to install. You should run the &lt;a href="@update"&gt;database update script&lt;/a&gt; immediately.', array('@update' =&gt; base_path() . 'update.php'));
   break;
}