| Computer Gripes | documenting the down side of computer stuff |
|
HomeSearchMerchandiseAboutMichael HorowitzMy CNET Blog
|
| Index: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ALL |
 |
Windows Update GripesWindows Update applies bug fixes to Windows and IE |
 |
Updates are not installed successfully from Windows
Update, from Microsoft Update, or by using Automatic Updates after you repair a Windows XP installation
A Microsoft KB article from October 2, 2007.
May 15, 2007. Microsoft-Watch.com by Joe Wilcox. Secure or Insecure with Windows Update?. A couple stories about how the May 2007 Patch Tuesday bug fixes caused problems instead of fixing them. In one case deleting the "SoftwareDistribution" sub-folder of the Windows folder fixed the problem.
May 11, 2007. ComputerWorld. Microsoft's fix for Automatic Updates lockup not working. Windows XP systems are still locking up during patch update attempts, even after installing a bug fix from Microsoft. Process svchost.exe uses 100% of the cpu when running Windows Update, in effect, a denial of service attack by Microsoft on Microsoft. The problem is referred to as the "svchost/msi issue". The problem may even occur simply if Automatic Updates are enabled (it's a background process).
When Critical Updates kill April 30, 2007. Robert X. Cringely in InfoWorld. Not only did applying a bug fix create problems but the problem being fixes was very trivial and never should have been automatically installed. The article also has this useful bit of information: "If your computer has been hosed by this or any other security update, you can contact Microsoft tech support without having to pony up for the call: 1-866-PCSAFETY (727-2338)."
Update Windows without Microsoft from Ghacks.net. February 11, 2007. About autopatcher, an alternative to Windows Update.
July 6, 2006. Bug at 3AM. I was looking at a Windows XP SP2 machine that was about six months old. It had all the defaults for Windows Update, including to apply fixes at 3 AM. However, this computer was always turned off at 3AM. So I ran Windows Update and expected to see a large list of bug fixes that had not been applied. Instead the machine was up to date. It does not only install bug fixes at 3 AM despite saying so.
Dump Windows Update, use alternatives by Brian Livingston June 29, 2006. The recommended alternative is HFNetChkPro from Shavlik Technologies. At the time of writing, it sold for $25 per computer plus $6/year after the first year. Quoting: "In addition to patching Windows and Microsoft Office apps, NetChkPro can auto-deploy patches for Firefox, Adobe Reader, WinZip, RealPlayer, Macromedia Flash, and other programs." Note though, that the minimum purchase is for 5 computers, $125.
To auto-update or not to auto-update by Brian Livingston. May 25, 2006. A stinging indictment of Windows Update.
When Automatic Updates can be harmful by Woody Leonhard May 11, 2006. Quoting: "For years I've been advising Windows consumers to disable Automatic Updates: Keep Microsoft's mitts off your machine until you're darn sure the proffered patches do more good than harm ... Windows auto-update is for chumps."
Windows Update Problems
by Daniel Petri. Includes solutions.
|
|
October 11, 2004. Some research on the Internet turned up the explanation. It is sufficient for the BITS service to be running, however it is not sufficient for the Automatic Updates service to be running - it must also be set to an Automatic startup type. Changing the startup type fixed the problem.
July 20, 2004. Windows 2000 SP4 with all critical bug fixes applied. I upgraded Windows Media Player from version 7 to 9. Then after a few reboots I ran Windows Update and it found a critical patch for Windows Media Player 9, something regarding scripting. I downloaded the 2.8 MB patch and it installed just fine. Windows Update did not say that a reboot was needed. A reboot is needed however. I checked the Run Once key in the registry and there was an entry for this patch.
May 23, 2004. A reader of this page wrote to say that he got a 0x80072F05 error running Windows Update that was due to the fact that the date on his computer was not set correctly. I tried to confirm this by setting the date on my computer back a few months and got a different error:
Windows Update has encountered an error.
This may be due to a discrepancy in your computer's time setting.
To check your date and time setting:
On the taskbar, double-click the time. Verify that the date and time is correct.
My error code was 0x800C0008. A word to the wise.
|
I did three things and the problem went away, so I'm not sure which of the three fixed the problem.
|
November 12, 2004. I got error code 0x800C00008 again. When running Windows Update ZoneAlarm asked me a question and I was doing something else, not paying attention and said to Allow it. Then I just refreshed the Windows Update page and the second time, it ran fine.
April 12, 2005. Windows 2000 SP4. I got another error code 0x800C0008 when running Windows update. It was about midnight on Patch Tuesday. Perhaps Microsoft is busy giving out patches to the world. A few minutes later, everything worked fine.
April 13, 2004. This was the day Microsoft released the April bug fixes. I didn't know that and happened to be running Windows Update on a number of computers, just because they needed it. A few times Windows Update failed, my guess being it was just over-taxed. Here is one example. The error is 0x80070077. I didn't research this.
The application of bug fixes (patches) via Windows Update seems to have wiped out the saved userids and passwords in Internet Explorer. I can't prove there is a direct link, but it happened on both a Windows XP machine and a Windows 2000 machine on the same day that I ran Windows Update. Too much to be a co-incidence.
April 15, 2004. I guess I was right (above) Microsoft Patches: Too Much of a Good Thing? By Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft Watch April 14, 2004. In eWeek. Alternate Link
October 5, 2003. Windows 98. Running Windows Update manually, one of the available bug fixes was to DirectX. Specifically, it was a download of the DirectX 9.0b end user runtime. The computer had a dial-up modem connection and I had time for applying only one of the available fixes. Windows Update showed this fix to be 293 KB in size, fairly small for a bug fix.
Windows Update lied.
The thing that is 293 KB is a setup program for DirectX. After it downloads, it runs automatically and it, in turn, actually does the real download of the 9.0b end user runtime. How big is the big download? None of your business. Microsoft never says. The setup program instead provides an estimate of the time required to download the big file but these estimates have in the past been way off. In my case it estimated 40 minutes (I didn't track how accurate this was). Recall that I only had a little time and chose to install this update and ignore others because this update was small.
Perhaps you are thinking I could have cancelled out of the download. The DirectX setup program had no active Cancel button, it was disabled.
August 25, 2003. Windows 2000 SP3. The machine in question was running Windows Update for the first time. There were a few problems.
After the first scan for updates, Windows Update reported:
"Your total selected updates include an exclusive item that must be installed separately from other updates. To install the exclusive item, click Install Now. If you wish to install other critical updates, remove the exclusive item by clicking Remove."
This was not true, there were two items that BOTH said they had to be the only one. One was Internet Explorer (IE) 6 SP1. The other was Service Pack 4 for Windows 2000. I opted not to run the SP4 install. What would have happened had I not found this and opted not to install both must-be-run-along patches? Why does Windows Update select to install two stand-alone patches and another 29 patches when it knows full well that it will have to be run three times with two re-boots in-between?
Upgrading from IE5 to IE 6 Service Pack 1
The computer in question started with the RTM (oldest) version of Windows 2000 and then had Service Pack 3 installed. Installing SP3 makes no changes to Internet Explorer which remains at version 5, from the RTM release of Windows 2000.
Windows update offered to upgrade IE5 to IE6 SP1 among other updates. This required an 11 meg download during which something went wrong. After I said OK to the error message informing me that the download did not complete, Windows Update said it was installed fine and I should reboot. Wrong again.
Every time you run Windows Update (WU) it checks for the latest version of itself. As this was run in August 2003, the version of Windows Update used was 4. The ActiveX control for WU4 was installed before anything else.
I took the suggestion and rebooted. Running Help -> About Internet Explorer from IE showed that it was still at version 5. The update had not, in fact, taken even though WU said it had. The installation history function of Windows Update showed that the upgrade to IE6 SP1 was successful.
I ran WU again and now it thinks that the update from IE5 to IE6 SP1 was not done. It shows up again in the list of available updates. This a major programming mistake by Microsoft. The applying of the patch and the logging of its being successfully applied are a Logical Unit of Work. They have to either both happen or both not happen. You can't have one happen and the other not happen. Unless you are Microsoft and are held to a lower standard. In this case, the log entry of the patch apply was written despite the fact that the patch was not correctly applied. Disgraceful.
I request the IE 6 SP1 upgrade again and again the IE6 setup program starts.
Another gripe: upgrading Internet Explorer works differently than all other Windows Updates as IE has its own setup program. You start the upgrade of IE by downloading the IE setup program. Microsoft does not explain this.
The IE setup program detects the failed previous download and asks if I want to resume the failed download or start again from scratch. I'm impressed but only for a nanosecond. I tell it to start from scratch and it does not. Instead it recovers the components previously downloaded and offers to download the remaining 4 megabytes of data.
All goes well. But, I read the messages as they zip by and notice that the IE setup program is upgrading Windows Media Player. Who asked it? Its not obvious what it upgraded though as the version afterwards is 6.4, fairly old. Speaking of not asking, the IE setup program normally offers quite a few options for what it will update and the user (me) gets to chose the desired components. I was not asked at all, it just said I needed an 11 meg download. I believe that with Windows 2000 the IE setup program never offers choices, but I'm not sure.
| After the upgrade and reboot, IE was at version 6 SP1. This is shown here on the right. Good news? Not so fast. |  |
| I checked another computer with IE6 SP1 and saw that it had 7 critical
updates applied to it after Service Pack 1. I have none. All this effort and IE is still old. Quite old and quite
vulnerable. The Marx Brothers and tutti-fruity ice cream come to mind. |
 |
The installation history function of Windows Update shows 
two
successful installs of IE6 SP1 as shown here. Not quite.
Running Windows Update again turns up two updates that I find interesting.
The first one no doubt is some of the missing 7 critical updates to IE6 SP1. Which of the 7? It's not immediately obvious. The more information link takes you here and it appears to be bug fix Q822925, the seventh of the missing 7 patches. On the other hand, its a cumulative patch.
Outlook Express was upgraded as part of the upgrade of IE. The second update above makes it seem as if it too was upgraded to an old version.
This is really disgraceful, especially considering this is version 4 of Windows Update, a mature product. What does it say when the product for installing bug fixes has so many bugs itself?
By the way, there are another 28 bug fixes.
I want to do nothing but upgrade IE, so I opt to not install 29 of the 30 outstanding upgrades. There is no easy way to do this. I have to click 29 times on a Remove button. Some of the updates have a date, some don't. Some say what software they update, some don't. Disgraceful.
The IE patch is installed fine. This time though there is no IE setup program to deal with. <sarcasm>Consistency would make it too easy.</sarcasm>
| It seems not have been a cumulative patch. Help -> About Internet Explorer shows only a single patch, Q822925 (see picture at right). Where are the other six? Beats me. There are no more IE updates in Windows Update. |  |
I then repeated this on another computer, one running Windows XP SP1 with IE 6 SP1. That machine too, had no patches applied to IE 6 SP1. Windows update said it needed 33 patches totaling about 35 megabytes. I downloaded and installed them all. Afterwards Help -> About Internet Explorer showed that IE 6 SP1 had a single patch (under Update Versions), the same Q822925 as on the Windows 2000 computer.
Where are the six other patches that appear on the machine where Windows Update has been run regularly?
Note: On the Windows 2000 machine described above, the ActiveX control that is Windows Update was version 5,4,3630,2550 from January 15, 2003 (this from looking at the Update class file in C:\WINNT\Downloaded Program Files). On August 28, 2003, both machines described above had the version of the Windows Update ActiveX control upgraded to version 5,4,3790,14 from August 25, 2003.
Upgrading from IE 5 to 6 on Windows 98
January 2004. Starting from an old version of IE 5.5, Windows Update shows both updates to 5.5 and IE 6 SP1. I installed the updates to IE 5.5, rebooted and ran Windows Update again. This time I upgraded to IE 6 SP1, rebooted again and ran Windows Update again. Then there were six critical updates to IE6. Why cant it install latest version of IE 6 the first time around?
August 27, 2003. Windows 2000 Service Pack 4.
After turning on the automatic
update feature recently I had not been notified of any outstanding patches.
Checking the configuration of automatic updates showed it was not operational,
the checkbox for "Keeping my computer up to date" was grayed out
(Control Panel -> Automatic Updates). The message said "The Windows Update
Service is unavailable." (see right)
You start a service in Windows 2000 with Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services. Of course, there is no Windows Update service at all. Instead, there is an Automatic Updates service. The startup type for the service was Manual, which means that it can be started by any program that wants to start it, but it will not start automatically when the computer boots. I had configured it this way on purpose because, at the time, I was not using the automatic update feature.
Interestingly, the Automatic Updates service was started. It was running even though the Automatic Updates feature said it was not. Back to the Automatic Updates feature and now it's alive and well, no longer complaining. The checkbox is no longer grayed out. I did nothing. The Automatic Updates feature started the necessary service when it detected that it wasn't running. Fine.
However, the gripe is that the Automatic Updates feature is not smart enough to configure the Automatic Updates service to start automatically. If it is set up for manual starting, then the next time your computer starts up the Automatic Updates service will not run and you will not be notified of new bug fixes.
August 28, 2003. Next, I tested if it would have started the necessary service on its own, without my having brought up the control panel applet. After rebooting the machine the next day, I waited until it had been running for about an hour. At this point, the Automatic Update service was not running. Not very automatic, in fact, this is probably a bug. This confirms the above point. Whoever designed Automatic Windows Update never considered that the underlying service might set for manual startup. A goof. The net effect is that you could think you are protected, but not be.
I noticed that as soon as the Automatic Update user interface was started, and the error about the Windows Update Service not running was issued (as shown above), the service was started. In other words, a few seconds after issuing the error shown above, it was no longer true. This definitely shows that, in this instance, the automatic updates require a manual kick-start.
Still another bug: When the required service is started, the user interface is not refreshed to reflect this. That is, the error shown above remains on the screen. Only if you cancel out of it and restart it, will the Automatic Update UI reflect the fact that the necessary service is now running.
Still another gripe: If this is the way it works, then at least when you opt for automatic updates, it should test that the necessary service is configured to run automatically. All in all, not well thought out.
August 27, 2003. Windows XP SP1 with all bug fixes applied except one for Outlook Express.
The Automatic Updates feature notified me that there were updates available to download. I did nothing. That is, I neither said to ignore the download or accept it, but left it pending. Shortly after the next re-boot of the computer, I am again told that there is a pending update. Fine. Except for one thing. The computer is no longer online, I had disconnected the Ethernet cable. Windows still offered to start the download of the pending update. I said yes and it disappeared. That is, no download started and no error messages were displayed.
I guess the people that programmed the Automatic Updates feature could not imagine an off-line computer.
There are two automatic update features in Windows and it's not clear, to me, whether they overlap or not. The one most people would not think of, is in Internet Explorer. In IE6, Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced Tab -> "Automatically check for Internet Explorer Updates". Perhaps the IE programmers never talk to the Windows programmers so they each came up with their own automatic update feature. I checked the Help for IE and there was no explanation of this option.
September 3. 2003. Windows 2000 SP4. When the automatic Windows Update finds bug fixes for you, it displays the message shown here. You must single click on the icon in the system tray. Don't double click, at least not if your mouse pointer automatically goes to the default location on new windows. Double clicking tells Windows Update to do something but you won't know what. The user interface that the single click brings up disappears in a nanosecond when you double click. This may be because my mouse defaults to hovering over the default button in any newly opened window. What happens? |
|
 It
starts to download the bug fixes. Initially the icon disappears, but
then it comes back in a short while. After it comes back, clicking on it
offers a Pause option. Right clicking also offers a Pause option. Double
clicking does nothing. Hovering over it results in a tool tip shown here on
the left. There is no UI and no way to know what is being downloaded.
(October 15, 2003) |
|
September 3, 2003. Windows 2000 SP4. The first time I installed a bug fix (patch) using the automatic feature I noticed that you don't get as much information about each bug fix as when doing it manually. Both have a link for more information. When in automatic mode (so to speak) the additional information is a couple sentences. When in manual mode (my term) you are linked to the full blown report on the bug fix, usually a very long web page. Also, in manual mode there is an option to see a list of previously installed bug fixes. This does not exist in automatic mode.
When automatic mode said the fixes had been downloaded and were ready to install, I told it install them. At this point, ZoneAlarm notified me that the Windows Update program wanted to access the Internet. Specifically, the Windows Update AutoUpdate client program wuauclt.exe wanted net access. If the fix really was downloaded, there should be no reason for another Internet access. Spyware? This does not happen with the manually run version of Windows Update. |
 |
FYI: Automatic Update finds missing critical updates only. It ignores bug fixes rated important and moderate and low.
September 5, 2003. Microsoft makes tracking bug fixes more confusing than it needs to be by assigning two ID numbers to each bug fix. One is a Knowledge Base (KB) number such as 822925. The other is a bulletin number such as MS03-032. Who thought this was a good idea? The Windows Update Installation History and the Add/Remove Programs applet display the KB number.
Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer by Patrick Douglas Crispen October 14, 2004. Quoting: "What you may not know is that Windows Update lies. [GASP!] No, really. Windows Update frequently thinks you've installed a Critical Update you haven't, leaving your computer vulnerable."
Brian Livingston said this regarding Windows XP SP2: "Microsoft acknowledged on Aug. 31 that the browser's pop-up blocker in SP2 can cause the Windows Update site to halt with "HTTP error 500." (Other pop-up blockers can cause this, as well.) The solution is to add the Windows Update site to the browser's list of sites that are allowed to use pop-up windows. This is explained in Knowledge Base article 883820." Problems mount with Windows XP Service Pack 2 by Brian Livingston September 9, 2004
Why Microsoft's patch process needs patching By David Berlind of ZDnet July 2, 2004
When Update... Won't by Fred Langa June 21, 2004
Fred Gets Bitten By The "Cannot Update" Bug by Fred Langa September 15, 2003
Stephen Manes comments on Windows Update in the September 15, 2003 issue of Forbes Magazine: "...it won't always get you key fixes for other Microsoft programs like Office, it doesn't clearly document what it is doing, and it doesn't always install the patches as quickly as you might expect. Sometimes it just plain doesn't work, and when it does, it may deliver patches that cause problems of their own. It's ugly ... "
One Small Step For Microsoft … By Mary Jo Foley August 8, 2003 Quoting: "Microsoft's current software-patch management strategy is a scattershot one, as many company officials themselves admit. More often than not, the latest patches and software updates break users' existing systems. And Microsoft's patches and service-pack updates tend to be hard to find, difficult to deploy and a pain to manage."
Untrustworthy Computing by Maryfran Johnson in ComputerWorld magazine August 18, 2003. Quoting: "...the IT staff ran into deployment problems last week while using Windows Update server technology and switched to Novell's ZENworks so that staffers could automatically distribute the necessary patches..."
Russ Cooper, moderator of a mailing list with 30,000 subscribers that tracks Microsoft's software weaknesses, said that Windows Update does not always correctly detect if a bug fix is on a computer. It checks the log of applied fixes, but does not really look to see if the fix is really there. Had there been an error applying the fix, the log might report incorrectly. Flaw seen in patch by Microsoft August 15, 2003. CBS MarketWatch
Microsoft patch process called into question by Jaikumar Vijayan in ComputerWorld magazine August 14, 2003. The article starts with: "Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Update patch management program has a critical shortcoming that in some cases could fool users into thinking their systems are properly patched against some vulnerabilities when in fact they aren't. That warning comes from Russ Cooper, moderator of the popular NTBugtraq mailing list...".
Patches issued by Microsoft have been too difficult to use and their quality has been too low, partly because internal competition among Microsoft developers to build better patch-management software caused too many to reach the market. Chief security strategist Scott Charney said "We were making it more difficult than it had to be." About 95% of hacker attacks occur against known vulnerabilities in software. Microsoft To Patch Its Patch Approach. Internet Week. June 3, 2003.
Brian Livingston reports that Windows Update routine was quietly changed to upload to Microsoft your Product ID and a list of your hardware. Prior to the change, it merely downloaded a list of all available fixes. Your PC then figured out which ones you didn't have without sending any data back to Microsoft. A spokesman for Microsoft said no one is forced to use Windows Update. March, 2003.
From WinXP News January 22, 2002. Windows Update Site Goes Belly Up. Quoting: " Did you notice the Windows Update site went belly up the week before last? ... The Windows Update site was actually down for several days. . . . over 8 million people download updates from that site each week ... many XP users need updates to their operating systems to keep their systems safe. What was strange was that Microsoft never fessed up to the problem. This left thousands of users wondering if there was something wrong with their software or Internet connection. The least they could have done was to put something on the front page of the Microsoft Web site informing customers of the problem. Looks like they still have a long way to go before they reach trustworthiness".
Community
Newsletter: Q&A: Help! My Windows automatic updates suddenly stopped working at CNET forums.
Many suggestions on fixing Windows Update. September 14, 2007
You receive a "0x800A01AE" error message or a "0x080070570" error message when you try to connect to the Windows Update Web page or to the Microsoft Update Web page in Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP. Last reviewed January 2006.
www.patchlink.com offers competition for Windows Update.
How to troubleshoot Windows Update, Microsoft Update, and Windows Server Update Services installation issues a Microsoft KB article. Added November 11, 2005.
You may receive an error message when you search for available updates on the Windows Update Web site a Microsoft KB article that covers these errors: 0x800A0046 • 0x80248011 • 0x80072EE7 • 0x8024402C • 0x8024502D • 0x800A01AD. May 31, 2005.
"Software update incomplete" error message when you visit the Windows Update Web site from Microsoft, last reviewed March 23, 2005. This has instructions for manually removing all traces of Windows Update files from your computer, so you can start fresh after a failure.
Can Patch-Management Companies Survive? By Brian Livingston in Datamation. November 9, 2004. Quoting: "Who would have thought that a day would come when there are far more companies selling ways to patch PC operating systems than there are companies selling PC operating systems? ... there are at least 21 major players in the business of providing patch-management software that simplifies the maddening task of applying the scores of fixes that come out each year for Windows, Microsoft Office and other programs ..."
When used with a fully functional non-IE browser, Windows Update displays a totally blank page instead of some sort of error text directing you to use Internet Explorer. Any web browser, other than IE, that supports frames (almost all do) and JavaScript (again, almost all do) will suffer the blank page fate. More about this is in my gripes about web sites that don't work well with Firefox. July 18, 2004.
The Promise--And Problems--Of The New Windows Update by Fred Langa in Information Week July 12, 2004
In the C:\Windows directory (perhaps C:\WINNT in Windows 2000) there is a file called Windows Update.log that appears to be a log of Windows Update activity.
There is a Windows Update Troubleshooter from Microsoft. Mostly its a list of bugs in Windows Update.
Getting errors with Windows Update? August 23, 2003 from sniptools.com
Fixing Windows Update Error 0x800A138F by Dylan Greene. About HOSTS file interfering with Windows Update.
Windows Update Failure - Error Code 0x800A138F
by Marc Liron
Windows Update Failure - Error Code 0x8007007Eby
Marc Liron
Windows Update Failure - Error Code
0x800B0004 by Marc Liron
Windows Update 643 Error and the Catalog Database from Microsoft.
HOW TO: Download Windows Updates and Drivers from the Windows Update Catalog Avoiding Windows Update
| Page created: August 25, 2003 | Page last updated: October 3, 2007 |
| Prior updates: September 17, 2007 | May 11,26,28 2007 | March 1, 2007 | August 29, 2006 | |
|
Home |
Search | Merchandise | About | Griping by: Michael Horowitz | TOP |
