Last week a friend of mine brought me two computers (an Acer laptop and an Acer netbook) to fix some issues with both. Both computers have been sitting idle for a while due to the issues with them and were behind in their Windows updates. The issues with them were solved without any problems and both computers quickly picked up on their updates. Then at some point in one of the various update-check for new updates-update again cycles both stopped updating with a 8024402F error code. One computer has Windows 7 64-bit Pro (I think) and the other has Windows 7 Starter Edition. Both are genuine legal Windows 7 licenses.
I researched this and found many solutions but none of them worked, including changing settings for automatic updates, removing Microsoft .NET 4 client (or similar to that) running various Microsoft Fixit tools, running a batch file that stopped some services and renamed a folder somewhere
nothing worked. Then yesterday I had an AHA! Moment. I had this situation also happen in my own computer a couple of months ago which was a new build and fresh Windows 7 install just a month old. At that time I solved it by removing the .NET 4 stuff and changing Windows Update settings. Then I realized that other than being on the same network, all three had in common that I had installed Office 2007 in all three of them (per owners request in the ones that are not mine). So I decided to uninstall Office 2007 in those two computers.
When I uninstalled Office in the netbook, Windows Update came back to life by itself even before the Office uninstall was complete. The progress bar was still not full when the popup for new updates came up. However in the other computer I was not so lucky. No such thing and I still got the same damn error after removing Office 2007. Even after doing a system restore to the last date prior to the owner bringing it to me which is a date that WU was known to work. All restore points after that date were due to updates it did get in my hands prior to the problem. Still no luck.
Suggestions?
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