Microsoft Update and Downloads not working?!

For a couple of months now we seem to have lost the ability to download from Microsoft, or use their Microsoft Updates site.

Trying to download the .Net 3.5 software, web installer file downloads ok, but as the installer trys to download the software it just stalls and never gets above 0KB/s transfer speed. After a while I'm greeted with a "Re-establishing connection with the server (attempt 1 of 5)" message

MS Update acts in the same way and throws up an error code, although don't know it off hand (will have to wait for MS Update to time out before it gives me the code).

The main microsoft site works fine and so does the 'Microsoft Download Center' at a speedy 3.4MB/s.

I've checked the proxy and can't see any changes made that could have caused this.

Anyone have any ideas on how to troubleshoot this? I'm trying to farmilarise myself with wireshark at the moment as my next step...

Would like to get this fixed though as I'm currently having to take machines home to run MS updates!

Is this just on a single machine (eg WSUS server) or are all your machines having problems?

Could you have changed the status of the BITS service to disabled? This will stop updates working (but I think you'd get a helpful error message!)

You should really setup a WSUS server or install as many updates as you can on your master images. A combination of both works best. I've created an offline pack which will install all .NET Frameworks on XP for you.

At the moment, if you're having to take machines home to update then it (most likely) is a problem with your proxy or possibly ISP but doubtful. You could try adding exceptions within IE and see if this helps.

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windowsupdate.microsoft.com

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Is this just on a single machine (eg WSUS server) or are all your machines having problems?

Could you have changed the status of the BITS service to disabled? This will stop updates working (but I think you'd get a helpful error message!)

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This is happening on ALL machines.

BITS is enabled and working, as is cryptography.

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You should really setup a WSUS server or install as many updates as you can on your master images. A combination of both works best. I've created an offline pack which will install all .NET Frameworks on XP for you.

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We do use WSUS, and we do install all updates on new images. That's what I mean by having to take machines home (to build images).

WSUS appears to be synchronising succesfully, however Windows Update fails when used directly on the desktops.

We bypassed the proxy to see if a direct connection worked, and although it gave us a new error message, it does seem to be the proxy that is at fault.

We use ISA 2000 which is probably why we're having problems but its worked fine up until now. We haven't made any significant changes to the server that would block BITS or Windows Updates and have checked that the necessary exceptions have been added, but still no joy.

We will be implementing ISA 2006 in a few weeks, so hopefully the problem will resolve itself that way...

Have you checked your proxycfg settings?

You might need to do a proxycfg -u

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/900935 for more details on how "Windows Update client determines which proxy server to use"

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Have you checked your proxycfg settings?

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Proxy settings have been double checked and all are correct... its an odd one.

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Originally Posted by Crispin

Proxy settings have been double checked and all are correct... its an odd one.

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Probably teaching granny egg sucking, but you do know that the values set by proxycfg are not those shown in Internet Explorer (but they are the ones which BITS will use)?

You say BITS is working OK; do you just mean that the service is running or have you used it to download a file? (If you've not done this, you can do it with bitsadmin - sample command is bitsadmin /transfer myDownloadJob /download /priority normal http://downloadsrv/10mb.zip c:\10mb.zip; you would substitute a suitable name, http and file location. You can then monitor the progress with bitsadmin /info myDownloadJob)

Thanks for that info srochford I will try out that util and see if that sheds any light!

Hi
Just felt like adding to this as I am having the same problem. Our WSUS server has a fault awaiting external repair so I wanted to use the MS Updates website directly to update ICT suite PC's but the computers just sit there for hours on "searching for the latest updates..." without anything happening. I have followed various steps from KB articles and Googled solutions but none of them have worked so far. It is my intention to solve this today.... after I finish my coffee of course!