I finally found a solution in the notes I took while researching this problem that worked, at least temporarily, to allow updates to the server. I am not sure who the original provider of this solution is, but if I come across it again, I will surely give them credit for it.

It appears that the major cause of the 0x80072efd error, at least on the SBS 2008, is a misconfiguration or meltdown of Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) and it can happen if your network goes out of alignment or something screws up like if your NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE  entry in the registry says 0 instead of 1.

Since WSUS is a core part of SBS 2008 and is supposed to pull updates from Microsoft and distribute the updates to computers on your network, when you call for updates, the agent goes to http://server:8530 expecting to communicate with the Windows Update Server locally. A problem with WSUS will affect the ability of  the update agent to pull down updates since the WUAgent gets no response back from an assigned WSUS server. It then throws up error 80072efd.

A quick and dirty fix is to temporarily hide or remove the local server and allow the agent to pull down updates directly from the Microsoft website. To do this, I uninstalled WSUS and edited the Windows Update entry in the registry.
To edit the registry:

• Click Start > Run > type “regedit” without the quotes, and accept the UAC prompt to continue

• Navigate to HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate

• Look at the keys in that folder, if they look something like this:
  “WUServer”=”http://SERVER:8530″
  “WUStatusServer”=”http://SERVER:8530″
  that means Windows Update is trying to look for updates on your own server. Chances are those updates don’t exist on the server (unless you have a successful installation of WSUS which was not our case).

• Delete the “WindowsUpdate” key from the registry at HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows.  I’d recommend you export this to a .reg file to be safe. Right-click on the folder and select “export” to save.

• Restart the Windows Update service. (located in Start > Run > type “services.msc” without quotes), or Start > Administrative Tools > Services > Windows Update Service (for those who like doing things the hard way).

If you don’t even see the HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate folder then this probably doesn’t apply to you.

This worked for me and I was able to update a server that had not been updated since November 2009!

After making sure that all updates were current, I went back and added WSUS as a role causing a fresh install of the update server. Your mileage may vary on this one. Make sure you have a reliable backup of your server before messing with the registry, and do this on a weekend just in case things go sour for you.

Good luck.

I recently bought a couple of NAS devices and each one of them failed woefully to do what was advertised.

First is what I actually started calling the Great White Turd. It is the Netgear sc101T. I have come across ridiculous devices before, but this one takes the cake for its total uselessness as a NAS device. What is the point of hard coding a “NAS” to use DHCP and no option of setting a static IP address. What part of “network” was missing during the development of the product? The SC101T forces you to install a client software on all computers that may need access to the device. The software cannot be installed on a server class Operating System like Windows Server 2003 or 2008. You have to mount the drive and share it to be accessible but since it is assigned a DHCP IP address, anytime you restart the computer, the drive mappings are shot to hell and you have to do it all over. For a product that retails for $180, I am almost tempted to start a class action lawsuit so we can recover some lost revenue due to emotional distress caused by this piece of crap.

Next is the Iomega StorCenter ix2. I was actually enthusiastic when I picked up this $300 device – compact case, easily accessible drive compartments, sleek brochure, nice web interface etc. That enthusiasm quickly vanished when I wanted to replace the two 500GB hard drives that came with it with 2 ITB  drives I had lying around. Never happened. It looks like these geniuses installed the free Linux NAS software on the hard drive instead of loading it as a ROM on the device. To make things worse, the software would not work on Windows Server 2000, 2003 and 2008. The EMC Retrospect backup software that is included is crippled because you cannot install it on a server. What am I missing? Since when did network Operating Systems become taboo in managing network devices? This lazy attempt to copy Microsoft by segmenting everything as Home, Road, Workplace, Media, Professional, Ultimate etc. is really annoying. Everyone is jumping into the NAS market with all kinds of totally useless devices with fancy titles and making billions of dollars while cranking out repackaged USB devices that should be retailing for nothing more than $50.

I had the same problem with Buffalo Linkstation TeraStation II a while back and encountered the exact same limitations. I could not use the device in a network environment with Active Directory even though the product was advertised as being compatible with an AD environment. After sending a blistering email to the support team, they offered a  replacement with a $2500 model and I had to pass.

When I was going through a box with old box with old devices, I came across a Franklin eBookman 901. It was still in its original box so I decided to try it out. I can tell you right now that I am seriously praying for that company to go bankrupt. The stupidity of their configuration is inexcusable. For some weird reason, they coded it so you cannot access the device unless it is plugged into a USB port. Totally unnecessary. I should not need a USB port to use the other functions of a “PDA-Like” device. Needless to say, I promptly trashed it.

I strongly believe OEM’s are very calculated in the way they release these products to the public. The mindset is that after buying the “Home/crippled” edition” which will obviously fall short of what you need it for, you will be “encouraged” to buy the next one in line which is ultimately more expensive and is just a re-badged version of the one you currently have with some disabled functions enabled. To me, this is the worst form of deceptive trade practice.

What I ended up doing was buying a 2-port SATA adapter and slapping it on an old PC I had on hand. I added two 1TB hard drives and installed the free Linux software called FreeNAS which many of these vendors and manufacturers use (although they would rather have you not know that) and I had a fully functional NAS  appliance. Total cost, less than $200 ($87 each for the drives, $20 for the SATA card).

This is a very serous problem, especially for small business owners. Not everyone has $2000 – $15000 to spend on network storage. In many cases, a simple 1TB  USB device works great, but there are times when it is helpful to make a device available to network users so they can store files they deem critical on the network.

So if you get a call from someone complaining that they cannot connect to their exchange server with Outlook 2007, have them check to make sure there is a gateway address in their IP configuration.

• Faster backup technology.
• Simplified restoration.
• Simplified recovery of your operating system.
• Ability to recover applications.
• Improved scheduling.
• Offsite removal of backups for disaster protection.
• Remote administration.
• Automatic disk usage management.
• Extensive command-line support.
• Support for optical media drives and removable media.

The part I have a problem with is Microsoft’s claim that “the design makes it especially well-suited for smaller organizations or individuals who are not IT professionals”. No, the old NTBackup was well suited for smaller organizations and everyone else, as a matter of fact, because it provided something we all cherish: CHOICE. With the old software, you had a choice of backup locations. You had a choice of whether you wanted to backup an entire disk or a single file. You had a choice of backing up to tape, external devices, internal drives or network drives. You could even backup up to a floppy drive for crying out loud. It was less expensive.

The new Windows Backup system will be an expensive and even dangerous experience for the small business owner without an IT person on staff. If a non-IT person had to deal with what I just experienced, there are going to be a lot of calls for data recovery because of hosed drives and lost data. The reason is that if you get hypnotized by the “Wizard” and just click through the backup process, you may end up reformatting a non-system drive with critical data. I know this because I tried it. I plugged in an external drive with test data and clicked through the wizard. It reformatted the external drive before creating the backup.

The latest iteration of Windows Backup is another example of the constant argument that Microsoft sometimes has a tendency of wanting to think for the consumer. Having been around this long, we expect more from the software giant. I have a suspicion that backup software vendors had a hand in the creation of this product. With the old software, I had no compelling reason to buy expensive solutions from third party vendors. It just worked. Backup was simple and restoration was the easiest you can imagine: locate your backup file, restore to your preferred location, done.

This latest disappointment came about because I was at a location the other day and we had just finished installing SBS 2008. The client had a Line of Business application with a database of about 100MB so I wanted to set up a nightly schedule to backup that one file. Never happened. It turned out that there was no option to backup single files. I either had to reformat a 1TB external drive to accomplish that goal, or backup the entire disk content totalling about 150GB. All because Microsoft got infatuated with a technology called VDI.

The point I was trying to make to this client was that enterprise-class solutions for small businesses do not have to cost a fortune. Of course, they could decide to keep using the “home” edition of Astaro, or, as I advised, donate some money to a good cause by buying the relatively inexpensive license for updates. If you have a small business and are putting off protecting your environment because of “cost”, you are not helping your business. Security software is an investment. If you can stop the threat before it gets into your environment, you have more time to focus on growing your business, not baby-sitting a spam or virus-infested mailbox every day.