Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

Vipe — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:00:25 GMT

Thanks , solved my problem, hardening W2K8 is not that straight forward.

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

Brad Rutkowski — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:05:35 GMT

Careful though, you can always crew up omre stuff if you adjust permissions on the root and then apply it to all folder/subfolders.

Make sure you backup that machine before doing this!

8000FFFF Windows Server 2008

brentil — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:45:12 GMT

I spent a bunch of time hunting around trying to find a solution to this issue. We remove the Users group from the root of our servers but don't cascade the change down on the system drive. We've done this with NT4, Win2000 Server, Win2003 Server, and thought we'd be able to do it with Win2008 Server but apparently not.

Adding it back in worked like a charm, however I don't necessarily like having it there. If I knew exactly where else it belonged I'd prefer to just add it to the needed directories.

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

Chris Walsh — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:44:44 GMT

Any tech note / kb from Microsoft on this issue?

I am going to try this now and if it works, remove the BUILTIN\Users (R) from root again.

Hopefully, it is a one off for updates.

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

Jon Nolen — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:37:41 GMT

I spent a lot of time trying to research this, and finally something works! Thanks!!!

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

Mike — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:32:53 GMT

I've been looking everywhere for a resolution to this problem. Finally a solution that works.

Thanks for the opening line about root security - rather stupitly I removed local user read rights

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

Brad Rutkowski — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:34:06 GMT

That's why I put 'em out here!

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

Simon K — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:35:11 GMT

Thank you very much for this.. I couldn't work out why either, and most people have no idea what they are talking about, or post irrelevant information.

This was spot on, cheers!

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

andres — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:21:46 GMT

dude you are the man!!.. wasted 2 hours on this and finally worked.

Possible cause of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 OS update failures with error code 0x8000ffff

Aaron Stebner's WebLog — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:36:16 GMT

Recently, I was helping a colleague troubleshoot an installation error in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

Eric — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:10:45 GMT

Thank you soooo much! I spent almost all day trying to figure this out!

I never would have figured this out!! You saved my day and about 100 hours! Thanks again!

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

RP — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:11:51 GMT

Wow.... after MONTHS of searching, finally an answer that works! We removed the Users group from the root for security purposes, and that's been stopping our updates since February!!

THANK YOU!!!!!!

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

James — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:35:25 GMT

Dude you freaking ROCK!!! I'm sitting here in the middle of Afghanistan with limited everything and I have been messing with this for a week now. Found your blog and fixed it in 1 minute. Thank You!!!

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

Randall — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:17:37 GMT

I agree you rock, I've been messing with this error for a couple months off and on.

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

Unis — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:44:44 GMT

Thank you very much for this.. You Rock ||

re: Windows Update fails with 8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED)

CS — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:29:31 GMT

You are great! Thank you so much for posting this!