Repairing Windows Update

If you run into the problem where Windows Update refuses to install updates, here is a solution Jason found on some other sites which seems to work pretty good if you do everything right! Apparently Microsoft knows this is a problem and has no solution but this works!



The issue is that the WUA 3.0 (7.0.6000.374) upgrade is corrupted,

essentially the system reports the WUA to be 7.0.6000.374 but the files on

the disk are still from the old version (you can check some of the DLLs like

wups.dll, wuaueng.dll etc... in the windows\system32) ... and you cannot

install the WUA 3.0 even manually.



Delete the following file:



C:\windows\winsxs\pending.xml



Since Windows security will not allow you to do this, hereunder the

procedure to take ownership of the file:



Run a command prompt with "Run as Administrator".

Type in the following commands:



takeown /f C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml





cacls C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml /G :F



Then delete the file



del C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml



Reboot the machine, then manually install the WUA 3.0 downloadable from

here: http://download.windowsupdate.com/v7...gent30-x86.exe



This should fix the Error 80073712 when the other solutions do not work.



BE AWARE that renaming C:\windows\winsxs\pending.xml might have

unrecoverable impacts on your Vista installation



NOTE:



As a result of this comand:



takeown /f C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml



your user name will display which you can use in place in

this command (drop the < and >, one space after G and no space after

):



cacls C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml /G :F



If the del command works (no errors displayed) you can go on and do the

download of Windows Update.



[Update]: There are reports that Comodo firewall is preventing Windows Update from working. You not only have to disable Comodo; you have to completely uninstall it.

Check to see if you have Comodo installed or running.

Goddess,

Can you tell me what kind of impacts on the installation that would be. I am deathly afraid of screwing up my computer, because as you know from all my posts that you help me with..newbie here. I finally got the Administrators Password reset, (am currently waiting oh help with making a recovery disk), so now I want to move on to fixing this update problem that I also have.

Failed updates: KB943899 - KB943411 - KB941568 - KB941569 - KB942624 - KB943078, and a few more!

Will following this repair mess up something that I can't fix?:unsure:

Thanks Much!

OK - when MS makes a statement like "unrecoverable impacts" (their wording, not mine), what they mean is that it's likely you'll have to reinstall Vista from scratch.



So ... your choices are either (1) try to repair the Windows Update catalog and run the risk of trashing Vista to the point that you have to completely reinstall it from scratch, or (2) not get Windows Updates anymore.



The second used to not be such a problem because you could get updates from a site known as AutoPatcher. But MS sicked their lawyers on the site and it got shutdown. So, now, you have to go to MS to get the updates. Plus, I believe that Vista SP1 is going to be distributed solely as an update, so there may not be any other way to get SP 1.



Yeah, I know this is really "bad form" from MS. They should have produced a downloadable script, that could then be run in safe mode, which would automatically repair the Windows Update catalog without any ill effects -- but they haven't.

Some thoughts and questions on the non-updating of VISTA.



One of my PCs [no firewall or virus engine running] is a clean install with only the bare OS loaded.

I started to follow your instructions but found I had no c:\windows\winsxs\pending.xml file at all !

So I downloaded the ...WindowsUpdateAgent... file and installed it. All went OK and I can now download updates. Thanks.



On my second PC however I have tried the same but failed. Halfway through 'Copying Files' it stops with a message of 'Install failed Error No 0x80070643'.



Both systems came from the same VISTA install disk and as far as I can tell are the same except the second one has a lot of applications loaded plus related data. I have turned off Windows Firewall, Comodo Firewall, and AVG Anti Virus.



Have you any thoughts on where to from here except to do [yet another] clean install of VISTA and try again to install the...WindowsUpdateAgent... file and if successful reload all my application software and data ?



Incidentally the wups.dll file is showing version 6.0.6000.16386 but there is also a wups2.dll file with the same version number.

Thanks.

Do you have either of the following on the failing machine: Windows Office or Zune?

Yes,

Office 2007 Professional. It is NOT on the PC that had the successful update.

Will that make a difference ?

It appears to. There are reports that Office is partially responsible for the installer error your getting.

Unfortunately didnt fix my problem though.

I uninstalled Office, turned off Comodo, AVG, and Windows Firewall and tried again.

Same error.

Its amazing really that this is NOT a piece of third party software trying to update a Microsoft OS but something as fundamental as Microsoft VISTA updates !

I really just dont know where to go from here. Sure I can scrub everything and start over again but even then I dont really have any guarantees that the bug-free install from my second PC [3.0 HT P4] will be repeated on this machine [Core 2 Duo].

I wonder whether SP1 will sort it all out ? Guess I might just have to wait and see.

All sorted out and I now have 47 new Updates installed !

The issue didnt turn out to be Office but Comodo.

I had disabled all aspects of Comodo but that wasnt good enough. It needs to be fully unistalled - after which the Update Agent installed all OK and everything worked from then on. Have reinstalled Comodo and I am smiling.

Thanks for help anyway.

Thanks for the feedback. I've seen reports on Comodo being responsible for this but your post indicated you had disabled it. I've updated the "pinned" section of the post to alert others about Comodo.