When you run the Windows Update service, you may sometimes discover that you are not able to install any windows updates or even use the windows update website. Instead, you get a message like:
The website has encountered a problem and cannot display the page you are trying to view. The options provided below might help you solve the problem
Then there is an error code 0x80070424. It could also show up as error 80070424.
This could be a symptom of one or more of the following problems:
Recently, I have been having all kinds of problems with Windows update, especially after the release of Windows 7 SP1. One of the frustrating things about Windows errors is the silly “Get help with this error” message that tells you absolutely nothing about how to fix the errors. Rants aside, here’s how to fix one of those cryptic errors, specifically error code 8007000D also represented by its hex variant 0x8007000D.
“Windows license locked!”
“This copy of Windows is locked. You may be a victim of fraud or there may be an internal system error” – malware message
Mikko Hyppönen of F-Secure has warned of a new variant of what he calls “Ransomware” or ransom trojans. These are attacks by malware that takes a computer hostage and then tries to extort a payment in return for returning control of the computer or its files to the owner. Sometimes, the malware will encrypt files (using AES – Advanced Encryption Standard, for example) until some “ransom” is paid by buying a key to unlock the hostage computer.
Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for Window 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in 2011. At that time, knowing that we would will soon be getting calls to update computers, we decided to give SP1 a spin. We attempted to install SP1 on three computers so far without much luck. First, using automatic update did not work. The download always got stuck at 90 or 91 percent complete.
I recently got a desperate call from a friend I helped to set up a domain running Windows server 2008. Apparently, something happened and nobody could log on to the server. My first thought was password expiration so I told them to just log on as domain admin and reset the passwords of the affected users.
Things got interesting when the next question was, “What is the password?”. Now, this was a year after the initial installation and I did not have the password – as a matter of principle, I encourage clients to change the initial password after an installation is completed so they have the assurance that I will not “sneak in”. They took my advise.
For several months, I had a client with a Small Business Server 2008 that just would not update. It worked for a while and just suddenly quit after a round of updates through automatic update. No matter what I tried from confirming network connectivity, checking firewall settings, adding and re-adding the update sites to firewall exceptions, disabling anti-virus applications and software accelerators to spending long hours reading Technet articles and suggested fixes from Microsoft, and a thorough step-by-step here, the problem would not go away and kept giving “Windows can’t connect to update…” error 80072efd.
