My Two Bits

Thanks , this fix worked for me after spending 14 days on many other suggestions. I am very grateful for your post.

Thanks, Update works again. I heard rumors about reinstalling Vista and whatnot, so I'm verey pleased to see a simple, working solution.

Thanks again for posting! :)

Your fix corrected my problem. Thanks Kailash

I've opened up the registry editor and I looked under HKEY Local Machine and cannot find LM. I don't understand how to enter the fix. Can you help me?

Perfect! Solved my problem instantly. Thnx Kailash

thx: This worked for me after spending several hours searching.

Hi, i have just tried this and get error 80070002 instead

What a great Thanksgiving gift!  I decided that this weekend - one way or another - I was going to fix this problem.  After months, I found your solution.  Thanks so much!

Hello.  I did the command line fix.

Now, however, I get error message

80070643.

Any help would be sorely appreciated.

I took MSsupport advice and checked whether the OSE was set to "manual".  It was.

So now I don't know what to do.

thanks. solve in one second..

LOL

Great, resolved my Windows Vista update problem and also resolved my problem of installing Adobe reader 8 and Photoshop Elements 6.

Thanks

Thank you so much for this solution. I hope it does not have a side effect (!).

Thanks the command worked well for me and i am prompted for new updates now.

Hey guys,

before do this command i must have uninstall this update KB929777 ?

Cause i do all this work on cmd correctly but still "The system was unable to find the specific registry key or value"

This fix is not working.  The screen states that the file could not be found.  Any suggestions?

Help. i don't understand how to use the above fix. i have that in my components folder already. do i delete it?

i run this command but again same problem.when i run this command its showing there is no such key in registry.every time i restarting my machine windows update showing new update ready to install but when i try to install same error coming.I re-installed my operative system(windows vista ultimate) but no use same error....i have 4gb memory.please give me suitable solution.....

ok...so I did all of that, cmd, etc, pasted the "solution", hit enter, but then it asked me: delete the registry value AdvancedInstallersNeedResolving (Yes/No)?

What do I do now?? If I write yes and hit enter, it says: error: the system was unable to find the specified key registry or value

Please, help!!!

I followed your fix correctly but my system responded with "The system was unable to find the specific registry key or value". Please help me to solve this also. I have 17 updates not installed.

Hey Kalish,

Thank you, Thank you, After I used your solution I then had error code 80073712 but I found a fix for that.  Again, Many thanks

Wow this rocks! It worked on my Vista Home Premium machine and has solved all update related problems.

To those of you waiting for MS help, just try this first. It takes just 1 minute! trust me

It would not update!! Tryed the renaming of Software Distribution folder, also eleting PendingXmldentifier"

"NextQueueEntryIndex"

"AdvancedInstallersNeedResolving"

under the registry key: HKLM\Components.

Nothing works! Help, please.

thank you it worked for me thanks again

I'm an IT professional and run into this problem frequently. I used this article yesterday to fix one Vista Business Dell XPS laptop yesterday. I used it to fix two more today. Thank you very much!

I used Windows Explorer's address bar to enter:

reg delete HKLM\Components /v AdvancedInstallersNeedResolving and after choosing Y (yes) on the command prompt. I still had to uninstall the 929777 update from Control Panel> Programs & Features> View Installed Updates and finally reboot.

Okay I had something similar happening a little while back and found a solution quite accidentally.

I don't remember if I had the same error (8000FFFF) but i remember there were two possible errors one with a series starting with 8xxxx..& the other with 7xxxx... Now incidentally I had trouble logging into my homail account and I google for it and realised that it had to do with my wireless router (netgear). It seems that the default value for MTU in netgear is 1500 while pppoe prefers 1492. Simple i changed the value and viola not only Hotmail loaded but I could  also get the automatic updates going again.

I hope this helps someone.

cheers,

ashy

Need help with error 8000FFFF.  Trying tirelessly to clear error.  Nothing seems to work.

Hi,

I am receiving this error when I am attenpting system restore because of the AutoUpdate loop my computer is going through (3 out of 3 installing 0% complete, shutdown, restart & repeat). I tried the reg delete but when the computer restarts it goes straight back to 3out of 3 screen so I checked the registry and AdvancedInstallersNeedResolving was still there after I deleted it. What am I doing wrong?

This worked perfectly. I spent many hours and many weekends trying to resolve this issue. Kailash, you da man! Many thanks!

Hi Kailash,

8000ffff.

Windows cannot locate the registry value set for that thing. How will I be able to update m computer? there any other way?

Thanks,

Noel

Before you do all of the things you have been told, First turn off you firewall and see it if takes it!

I deleted all the files, pulled my hair out only to find it was my Norton Firewall!

Too make matters worse after through downloading 8000FFFF, I got a message saying that the download was not necessary for my system.

Aint life grand?

But Then you must hide/ignore the download in the settings or it will never go away!

Floyd

Kailash,

You da man!!  This problem has been a thorn in my side since I purchased a Toshiba Satellite laptop with Vista on it months ago.  I tried everything I knew to fix it with no luck.  I just wanted you to know your registry edit works for Toshiba products too.

Thank You for posting your fix for others to use.

Allen

Thanks very much.  Truly appreciate it.

Hey man you are amazing this step is very helpful and it worked amazingly on my customers computer.thank you very much

I had high hopes for this, but then it seems as if I can't modify my registry.

When prompted with yes/no, I type y.

"ERROR: Access is denied."

This seems like a very amateur thing.  Did I not set the correct administrator privileges or something?

i tried this but get error: access denied. any ideas?

Your awesome fixed my new computer right up!!!  

How it worked for me:

1 Klicked on start button and in the search field in the big menu in vista that pops right up i enterd

reg delete HKLM\Components /v AdvancedInstallersNeedResolving

then i typed yes and pressed enter and opend update again and it worked! thanks :D

Thanks for the fix...worked a treat..much appreciated

Yeah. That did it. Have a Dell Prescision M90 with 4gb ram.

Things worked fine until recently (same system config since January 2008).

Strange thing.

Thank you thank you thank you.

Couldn't find this anywhere else - was facing a re-install. You're really a star!

OK, THIS WORKED!  I have a Dell Inspiron 1420 running 32-bit operating system, Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1, and 3 GB of RAM.  Out of the blue, I get this stupid alert from the Taskbar that I am not up to date, and of course when I try to update, I get the "windows could not search for new updates" and error code 8000ffff.  When I googled this, I spent 2 hours on all the different forums with the different ideas on what to try (reducing memory, deleting files in regedit, somehting about a hot fix, and one and on it went).  All of them sounded very technical, but most seemed to be from back in 2007.  In contrast, this thread here seems to have people posting all the way through 2008 that this fix was working for them.  So, although this fix is technical too, I crossed my fingers and went ahead and did it, praying I woulddn't permanently damage my registry or something.  Well, like magic, it worked and about 15 new updates just got properly downloaded.  Thank god for this fix.  Dell and Microsoft folks are USELESS.  Theie websites are useless.  Their Help resources are useless.

And, I hate Vista.  Repeat:  I hate Vista.  I had none of this with XP.  I have had nothing but random things like this occur with Vista.

Thank you for the fix, it worked perfectly.  I now got 16 critical updates and 17 recommended updates.  Working great!

Patty

PRAISE THE LORD!!!!  I have just purchased my new laptop 2 months ago and having this trouble scared me to death!  I'm not a whizz at this computer thing but your step by step insructions where the perfect fix!!!  Now downloading 20 different updates but at least they are available to me!!!!  Thanks so very much!!!!

Thank you for the fix. Worked perfectly.

Thank you so much! After 2 frustrating weeks, something that finally worked!

Thanks so much, this worked for me also. I haven't been able to update for the past 5 months and hadn't been able to find a fix for it until now.

OMG!!!

I did exactly what was said. Command prompt, typed in       reg delete HKLM\Components /v AdvancedInstallersNeedResolving    it then asked Yes/No and i typed yes. Then I went to my windows update and it asked me to download windows update update, so I did. And OMG it worked!!!! I had 70 updates to install and its been working great. I've been doing my happy dance ever since..much appreciated. xoxoxox

THANK YOU!!! that popup at startup was rly starting 2 tick me off and microsoft support is useless.

Again ty!

Ppl plz stop saying thank-you, because he needs to see what some ppl been having issues, not seeing "Thanks!!." I keep getting "ERROR : the system was unable to find the specified registry key or value."

Please some1 help me

This link to Microsoft page fixed the problem automaticly

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946414

Yahoo

Works Great on my HP DV2910US laptop, Vista Premium, I had problems with windows update it was hanging on de .net 3.5 update. After removing Registy items works fine agian

Thanks!

The link to:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946414

was the ONLY thing that got rid of the error message.

A million thanks to Robear Dyer and this blog!!

To make it easier: copy the string kindly posted by Kailash; go to Start > Run (Or use the win key + r) and paste it in the field, hit Enter. The cmd window will open, check the top if it says you're running as admin. In the black cmd window there should now be a question if you like to delete this key, type the anser (yes) and hit enter. That should be it.