Windows Update Error 0x800A0007

Recently trying to use Windows Update at a customers site that has SBS 2003 Premium R2 (with ISA) and received the following Windows Update error 0x800A0007 on every machine. Hmmm…this wasn’t happening last time, what’s changed? Did some searching on the Net and found a multitude of solutions from simple clearing of the IE cache to reformatting. The common point seemed that this issue was caused by Microsoft Genuine Advantage (yuk!).

So we went to the Microsoft download site and installed Windows Genuine Advantage on the machines manually. The secret is then to reboot the machines and try Windows Update again. Worked on all the machines.

Nice isn’t it that a piece of software designed to ensure you have a legal copy of Windows stuffs up keeping the software up to date? Gotta admit with all the problems that we have had of late we are no fans of Windows Genuine Advantage. We think that perhaps Microsoft should test this sorta thing more thoroughly, but hey that’s just us.

SBS2003 and Windows server SP2

Ok, bottom line at this point of the game is don’t do it. There seem to be plenty of things that Windows Server SP2 could break ( including network connectivity, backups, SBS console and more ). There also seems to be issues with uninstalling the sucker. Since there doesn’t appear to be any real burning need to install this service pack on your SBS server I’d just hang back and let someone else bleed to death.

Even though it appears quite a few (unknowing) folks have installed SP2 on their machines ( thanks mainly to automatic updates and WSUS ) there doesn’t really seem to be any concrete information about what or how the best way to install (or uninstall) the service pack or what needs to be upgraded before hand. It appears that things like HP broadcomm network cards needs to be upgraded but even that appears to be vague.

The hardest issues to resolve are related to certain chipsets of network cards, typically the Broadcom chipset. Here’s an overview of this and some other problems:

• VPN, network and connectivity issues. You may find issues with your ISA 2004 firewall, Outlook connectivity, Remote Desktop, or VPN (Virtual Private Network). If you have Broadcom NICs (network interface cards), first make sure you have the latest drivers installed. Then, use the Registry to disable RSS (Receive Side Scaling) and Task Offloading, as discussed in the SBS blog and the ISA Server blog.

• Help and Support Service missing. Seemingly the largest issue, and one that’s easily fixed, is that the Help and Support Service appears to be missing. The instructions to reinstall this service are discussed on the SBS blog for that platform.

• Issues caused by uninstallation of SP2. Issues caused by removing SP2 include scheduled tasks being altered so you must reenter your passwords. Also, unless you have Windows 2003 R2 or SBS 2003 R2, removing SP2 causes the rollback of MMC 2.0 to have issues. To resolve this, review the known issues in the release notes and remove the files from the %APPDATA%\Microsoft\MMC\ folder.

For the time being, hold off installing Windows Server SP2 on your SBS 2003 servers.

Outlook 2007 update

This update fixes a problem in which a calendar item that is marked as private is opened if it is found by using the Search Desktop feature. The update also fixes performance issues that occur when you work with items in a large .pst file or .ost file.

Direct Download:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c262bcfd-1e09-49b6-9003-c4c47539df66&DisplayLang=en

KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=933493

Getting – RTHDCPL.EXE Illegal System DLL?

And a nasty message like :

The system DLL user32.dll was relocated in memory. The application will not run properly. The relocation occurred because the DLL C:\Windows\System32\Hhctrl.ocx occupied an address range reserved for Windows system DLLs. The vendor supplying the DLL should be contacted for a new DLL.

(Especially on HP workstations)? See this article from Microsoft for fixes and reasons. It is caused after you install security update 925902 (MS07-017).

DNS Vulnerability

Possible DNS vulnerability on SBS2003 server as per the Microsoft article :

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/935964.mspx

The simple fix for the time being is :

1.

On the start menu click ‘Run’ and then type ‘Regedit’ and then press enter.

2.

Navigate to the following registry location:
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNS\Parameters”

3.

On the ‘Edit’ menu select ‘New’ and then click ‘DWORD Value’

4.

Where ‘New Value #1’ is highlighted type ‘RpcProtocol’ for the name of the value and then press enter.

5.

Double click on the newly created value and change the value’s data to ‘4’ (without the quotes).

6.

Restart the DNS service for the change to take effect.

Another bad encounter with Windows Genuine Advantage

For those that don’t know, Windows Genuine Advantage is software that Microsoft installs on your machine, usually via Microsoft Update, that checks to see whether you have genuine Microsoft software installed. If you don’t then you receive all kinds of messages to rectify the problem. Alternatively, if you have legitimate Microsoft software, then you SHOULD have no problems.

Our experience is that more and more problems are being caused by Windows Genuine Advantage. Prior to this recent incident we had an issues where Genuine Advantage wouldn’t allow Microsoft Update to function. The solution was to install Genuine Advantage manually. A definite pain having to manually install Genuine Advantage on all the workstations for our client.

Just recently we had yet another problem where Genuine Advantage prevented us from doing our jobs. We wanted to install the latest Outlook patch because it really speeds up your system :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c262bcfd-1e09-49b6-9003-c4c47539df66&DisplayLang=en

However, when we went to install it we needed to run Genuine Advantage to check our software again. With no other option we ran validation and were surprised to discover that it failed. Why? because we hadn’t as yet activated a version of Microsoft Project on the machine. So we couldn’t download the patch until we first ran Project and Activated it.

Now really, if Microsoft really wants us to install Genuine Advantage then they have gotta prevent things like this were we are totally prevent us from getting on with our work. How *@&*(@*(‘ing stupid is it to prevent us from installing a patch until we activate all Microsoft software?

Come on Microsoft, stopping making it so hard.