Repairing Windows Update Manually

If you run into the problem where Windows Update refuses to install updates, here is a solution Max 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/windowsupdate/redist/standalone/WindowsUpdateAgent30-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.