Patch Tuesday Issues

This month's Patch Tuesday didn't go as smoothly as I hoped. (For those who didn't sell their soul to the church of Microsoft System Administration - Patch Tuesday is the second Tuesday of every month, when Microsoft releases their critical system patches and we rush to update our servers before they get hax0red).

One of our w2k servers was not able to pull down the necessary security updates through Windows Update. I tried to troubleshoot by turning off the IPSec policy, and various firewall options, but it did not appear to be an access issue. The error code for the failure was: 0x80070057.

I called Microsoft, and we have been troubleshooting the issue for several days. (You should know that if you have a problem installing a security update, or any other critical update, Microsoft will troubleshoot the case for free). We ran through a bunch of these MSRPT reports and nothing seemed to really indicate the source of the problem. When I tried downloading the update manually, and installing it that way, I encountered no problems. So, clearly something was blocking the download, not the installation.

This morning, the Microsoft analyst that I was working with called to tell me that he escalated my case to the lead engineer of his group. We set up Netmeeting so that he could take a look at the server config. As soon as he logged in, he said "Oh you are running Microsoft Antispyware!!!" and I said, "why of course, kind sir, we don't want to get our asses hacked." He told me to turn it off, and try running the update again, and this time it worked.

I couldn't believe that Microsoft Antispyware was blocking Microsoft Windows Update - somehow, in its most default configuration, it was thinking that the security update was a virus! That's just asinine beyond comprehension. And I told the Microsoft guy exactly that. So he agreed to keep the case open, because something else must be going on that we haven't figured out yet, since this was not an issue on the other w2k servers (that also run Microsoft Antispyware with the same default config) which were able to download and install the updates without a glitch.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. If anybody is having similar issues, disable Microsoft Antispyware and see if that solves the problem. And, do try and avoid the brain aneurysm that might be caused due to the total absence of logic and common sense.