Windows – Fresh installed Windows XP refuses to update

windowswindows updatewindows xp

today I installed Windows XP SP2 Home on a computer. I went to try to run Windows Update on it and was greeted with "The website has encountered a problem and cannot display the page you are trying to view — error number 0x8024400A"

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I've encountered this kind of problem a lot of times. I remember when I worked at a computer repair shop 6 or so years ago I encountered it on a lot of computers running Windows XP. I never figured out how to fix it other than to do a reinstall of Windows. Googling for the error number never came up with any solutions either.

What is it that causes this problem and how do I fix it?

Edit:

Well, now I've installed windowsupdateagent30-x86 and that got me to where I can now browse a list of needed updates, but when I go to install updates I get the same generic error message, but with error number 0x80070715

Best Answer

Got this problem too on a VM I'm setting up for IE8 testing for websites. This was happening even after patching to IE8 and SP3 manually.

Googling around I found this blog post.

The guts of what is suggested is:

  1. I’ve downloaded newest version of Windows Update Agent for Windows XP (32-bit): http://download.windowsupdate.com/WindowsUpdate/redist/standalone/7.4.7600.226/WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe
  2. I’ve stopped Windows Automatic Update Service (net stop wuauserv)
  3. I’ve stopped Background Intelligent Transfer Service (net stop bits)
  4. I’ve ran Windows Update Agent setup: WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe /wuforce /norestart Ran net start wuauserv just to be sure Windows 5 .Automatic Update Service is started (actually it was started already by Windows Update Agent setup)
  5. I’ve started Background Intelligent Transfer Service (net start bits)

There are other suggestions listed at this MS link.

UPDATE: The following fixed the problem for me:

  1. Browse to http://support.microsoft.com/fixit
  2. Make sure the correct windows version etc is selected
  3. Select the topic "Install or upgrade software or hardware"
  4. Select the sub-topic "Windows Update"
  5. Choose the option "Fix the problem with Microsoft Windows Update that is not working"

This will download the fixit app to attempt to resolve the problem (note that it needs .net framework 2.0 so you can save time by pre-installing this).

In my case there were three areas that it fixed:

  • Service registration is missing or corrupt - Reset service registration.
  • Repair missing or corrupt files
  • Problems installing recent updates - Repair Windows Update
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