Code 80073712 and 8007371B

Hi!

I can't install updates KB2781197 and KB2845533.

Windows update gives the error codes 80073712 and 8007371B.

I've tried using the Troubleshoot tool, which reports that it finds and fixes errors, but the errors remain.

I also tried using the DISM tool, which indeed finds a corruption but fails fixing it, saying that it can't find the Source, with the error code 0x800f0906.

I've ran sfc /scannow which did indeed report an error that it fixed, and when I run it again it finds no errors.

So, I've tried the first two steps outlined here: Error Code 0x80073712 occurs in Windows Update or Microsoft Update

Since none of this worked, I thought I had to Refresh the computer. I didn't really want to, but I felt that I had to.

However, when I try to refresh, Windows just says that an error occurred and my PC can't refresh.

I also tried installing the Windows 8.1 update, but it too failed.

I have an AMD processor, Windows 8.0 Pro, one SSD on which Windows is installed and one HDD on which most applications are, as well as the Users folder (linked to C:\Users).

Does anyone have any ideas?

Try downloading the stand-alone installation packages for each KB in question from the Microsoft Download Center and see if bypassing the Windows 8 Updater works. Good luck.

I've tried that, and both updates still fail unfortunately!

bawng said:

I've tried that, and both updates still fail unfortunately!

Click to expand...

Just as a suggestion, open Updates and look at your list of installed updates to make sure they haven't been installed already. I had a situation once wherein I saw that an update had failed, so I tried installing the stand-alone updates and still they failed, and it was then that I thought to check the list--and sure enough the update had previously installed and Windows did not inform me except to say that the current update attempt had "failed"...

Still, I don't know what that would have to do with your inability to refresh your machine--perhaps the problem is more serious as in bad hard-drive sectors or ram that's going bad and intermittently writing bad stuff back to the drive, etc. You may have to do the old "format c:\ and reinstall the OS" routine, but I'd exhaust every other option you can think of first. Check that installed list thoroughly, though.

Thanks!
Unfortunately, the updates weren't there. I managed to fix one of them by simply manually extracting all the files from the update package and simply copying them to C:\Windows\WinSxS and then installing it again. Worked perfectly. Apparently, the update had failed to install at some point and wrote corrupted files to WinSxs, from which dism then tried to fix it.

The other update had no help from that, however.

In the end I reinstalled Win8 from an ISO and selecting to keep all my programs and personal files. Windows installed fine, but several updates failed to install, and a lot of programs kept crashing.

I then tried reinstalling but only keeping personal files. All updates would install after this, but a lot of freshly installed programs would still keep crashing.

Finally, I just backed up everything important and cleared the drive. First I ran chkdsk and some proprietary disk checker to make sure the ssd wasn't failing. And finally it worked. So, it was something with my personal files that was misbehaving. Probably the fact that I had a hard junction from C:\Users to D:\Users. This time I just keep everything on C:\ and manually store stuff on D:.

Thanks for the suggestions!

bawng said:

Probably the fact that I had a hard junction from C:\Users to D:\Users. This time I just keep everything on C:\ and manually store stuff on D:.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Click to expand...

You are certainly welcome--some of these problems are perplexing, and as in your case, sometimes the answer is found in the things we don't say or aren't at the moment thinking about! I've had no shortage of those, myself.

Just out of curiosity, were you dual-booting on D:\ and trying to simplify using the two OSes by linking the two users directories on each partition, or were you just running out of room on c:\...or...? At any rate, you are already in the habit of using partitions to separate your OS & utilities from your programs and data--and that's a great way to organize things--I've run with multiple partitions for more than a decade--presently I have 7 separate partitions spanning a couple of tb's. It's great because if one partition gets hosed for some reason your whole environment doesn't come crashing down around your ears--as I am sure you know!... It's also much better for back-ups and the like. (I get shivers--chills--thinking of folks buying 2 tb drives and making the whole darn thing C:\....arrrrgh!)

Yea, I'd highly recommend giving yourself enough room on C:\ for anything you are likely to install in the way of your OS and associated utilities, and everything else you run and store data for on appropriately divided partitions. My own C:\ is my smallest partition and is ~160GBs and about 2/3's full at the moment (including page files, etc.)

Glad to see that you solved the problem! (Sometimes I like to chat too much about this stuff--so if you fell asleep here I forgive you... )

I was just running out of space. C: is a small SSD, and the Users folder held all my music and films, etc., so I moved that to a regular HDD.

I do however have Linux on a third disk, but there's virtually no interaction with Windows, I don't even have the NTFS partitions mounted in Linux, so I don't think that that caused any problems.