When checking on one of our Small Business Servers recently I discovered that it hadn’t updated itself in a while – I attempted to manually run the error but got a message saying that
Windows could not search for new updates code 80072EFD
A had a look around and found a few fixes but some of the guides weren’t clear so figured I’d document the process step-by-step for future reference and anyone else!
The Cause
So it seems that most of the time this is cause by the SBS server in question looking at itself for updates, this is controlled by a registry key that is easy to check for and remove.
The Solution
- Open the Registry Editor (Start > Run then type Regedit and hit enter)
- In the left pane browse to the following key:
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > Software > Policies > Microsoft > Windows > WindowsUpdate
- In the right hand pane look for two keys called WUServer and WUStatusServer, if the values appear to be pointing at your server, for example http://yourServerName:8530 then this is your problem.
Backup the WindowsUpdate key (just in case) by right clicking on it and selecting export, saving it to a location you’ll easily remember.- Right click the WindowsUpdate key and select Delete
- Go to Services on your server (Start > Run then type services.msc and hit enter)
- Locate the Windows Update service, right click it and select restart
Now try windows update again – you should be good to go!
Note: For anyone in charge of a Small Business Server, I highly recommend the Windows Small Business Server 2011 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant.
