11Windows Update IconFix Windows Update or Service Pack error 80073712

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It’s that time of year again, and as always, when I vis­it the fam­ily over xmas there are vari­ous PC issues to resolve.  This year there were blessedly few issues, but there was 1 prob­lem that it took me quite a while to track down and resolve.  One of the fam­il­ies PCs was fail­ing to install Win­dows 7 ser­vice pack 1.  It’s a fairly new PC and came with an OEM install of Win­dows 7 x64 Home Premi­um, all legit and activ­ated.  It also has up-to-date anti-vir­us pro­tec­tion, and oth­er than the SP1 install prob­lems it seemed to be in excel­lent work­ing order.

Error 80073712

The error thrown by win­dows update was error 80073712, which accord­ing to win­dows help (and the Microsoft help page) “occurs when the Win­dows com­pon­ent store is cor­rupt”.  Microsoft provide a tool, called the Sys­tem Update Read­i­ness tool (KB947821) which it sup­posed to fix this prob­lem.  I down­loaded the tool and ran it (which took quite a long time), after which it repor­ted suc­cess.  I then reat­temp­ted the SP1 update but it still failed.

After fur­ther research I dis­covered this is an issue which has plagued both 32 and 64 bit ver­sions of Win­dows, ever since Vista.  It seems to affect all ser­vice pack releases (KB936330, KB948465 and KB976932) Hence the Sys­tem Update Read­i­ness tool being for Win­dows Vista, 7, 2008 and 2008 R2.  There are lots of unhelp­ful sug­ges­tions avail­able, but the actu­al solu­tion is fairly simple, as long as you have access to anoth­er PC with the same OS installed!  In my case I had my laptop with me, run­ning Win­dows 7 x64 SP1.  I’m not sure if hav­ing SP1 may some­times make a dif­fer­ence, or if hav­ing Pro­fes­sion­al instead of Home Premi­um may like­wise some­times make a dif­fer­ence, but in my case these dif­fer­ences did­n’t mat­ter — my solu­tion worked just fine.  For more detailed inform­a­tion, I found the Microsoft Tech­Net art­icle “Advanced guidelines for dia­gnos­ing and fix­ing ser­vi­cing cor­rup­tion” very useful.

The Solution

Firstly, down­load and install the Sys­tem Update Read­i­ness tool.  If you’re lucky this will just fix the prob­lem the first time.  How­ever, before attempt­ing the ser­vice pack install, we’re going to check…

Click on start and in the search box type “note­pad %windir%\logs\cbs\checksur.log” to open the read­i­ness tool’s log file.

At the bot­tom of the file there should be a sum­mary which looks like

[code lang=“plain”]Summary:
Seconds executed: 685
Found 2 errors
Fixed 2 errors[/code]

If the num­ber of errors fixed is the same as the num­ber found then you should be sor­ted — you can now just go ahead and install the ser­vice pack or win­dows update as nor­mal.  How­ever, in my case it was­n’t, so…

The log file iden­ti­fies any files it could­n’t fix.  Files it can­’t fix are ones that aren’t present on the sys­tem for some reas­on.  You need to get them from anoth­er PC run­ning the same ver­sion of Windows

In the log file, under the sec­tion called “Check­ing Com­pon­ent Store” there will be a list of files that are miss­ing or cor­rupt.  I had 4 lis­ted as below…

[code lang=“plain”]amd64_policy.9.0.microsoft.vc90.atl_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.30729.4148_none_a9427d6be424cb66.manifest
amd64_10568c9df37e2a69df4103e1a1b191ca_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16695_none_33990b4ad429800c.manifest
LDDMCore.ptxml in amd64_microsoft-windows-lddmcore_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_07bd8a45fd3dcc23
LDDMCore.ptxml in amd64_microsoft-windows-lddmcore_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.20715_none_0892dc3716229fcb[/code]

The mani­fest files can be found (on anoth­er PC) in %windir%\winsxs\Manifests and the folders con­tain­ing the oth­er files are found in %windir%\winsxs

Copy the miss­ing files to the PC with the prob­lem, into the fol­low­ing locations

.mani­fest files into %Windir%\Temp\CheckSUR\winsxs\manifests\
.mum and .cat files into %Windir%\Temp\CheckSUR\servicing\packages\
any files from the folders with the long names (in my case the 2 LDDMCore.ptxml files) go into the appro­pri­ate dir­ect­ory in %windir%\winsxs

This final step may require tak­ing own­er­ship and chan­ging the per­mis­sions of the dir­ect­or­ies in question.

Now re-run the Sys­tem Update Read­i­ness tool.  Once re-run repeat step 2 to open the log file, and con­firm that the sum­mary sec­tion now says the num­ber of fixes matches the num­ber of problems.

Assum­ing the value for fixes is now equal to the value for prob­lems found, you can now re-run the ser­vice pack or win­dows update, which should succeed.

What next

If for some reas­on you’re still hav­ing prob­lems, there are some oth­er things you can try…

1. Run the Win­dows Update troubleshooter

  • click on start, type “troubleshoot­ing” and press enter.
  • In the con­trol pan­el win­dow that opens click on “Fix prob­lems with Win­dows Update”.
  • Note: this applies to Win­dows 7, but the pre­cise details may be dif­fer­ent under oth­er systems.

2. Clear out the win­dows update cache…

  • Click start, type services.msc
  • In the ser­vices admin win­dow, scroll down to “Win­dows Update”, right click on it, and click stop.
  • Click start, type %windir%\SoftwareDistribution
  • Select all files and delete them.  If any won’t delete you can take own­er­ship and change per­mis­sions of them, or try again in safe mode.
  • Restart the “Win­dows Update” ser­vice from the ser­vices admin window.
  • Re-run the win­dows update troubleshooter

Extra things you can try

1. A disk check

  • It’s fairly unlikely, but it could be disk corruption
  • Open my com­puter, right click on the sys­tem drive (usu­ally Drive C) and select properties
  • Click on the tools tab, and click “Check now”
  • Make sure both boxes are ticked and click start
  • You will prob­ably have to restart, and the check might take a long time

2. The sys­tem file checker

  • Click start, type sfc /scannow
  • You might need an install­a­tion disk
  • This might take a while

3. Delete the pending.xml file in %windir%\winsxs

  • Click on start, type %windir%\winsxs
  • Scroll down and loc­ate the file pending.xml
  • Take own­er­ship and change the per­mis­sions of the file
  • Delete the file
  • Cred­it for this to TyeGuy on TechAr­ena forums
  • Please note that Microsoft do not recom­mend doing this (see com­ments below, thanks niemiro).  If you’ve got this far and it still isn’t work­ing, drop us a com­ment and we’ll see what we can do to help!

The last resort

Obtain a win­dows install­a­tion DVD, rerun setup and carry out a repair install.  You will have to rein­stall all updates.

[poll id=“2”]

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11 Comments

EEmilio

No tengo el archivo pending.xml
Por lo demás, he hecho todo excepto lo de car­gar de nuevo el Sis­tema Oper­at­ivo, y el error 80073712 persiste
Reply
? ?Carlos K.

This art­icle really saved my day but niemiro’s com­ments (and art­icles and his KB_Extractor) were also essen­tial. I finally did­n’t have anoth­er Win­dows 7 x64 install­a­tion with the files I needed so I had to identi­fy, down­load and extract the respect­ive win­dows update files. Lots of work — espe­cially the click-intens­ive per­mis­sion chan­ging part — but I am now finally installing the Ser­vice Pack as I write this com­ment… Thanks! 🙂

Reply
JSJon Scaife

A pleas­ure. Thanks for the feed­back. I’ll look at updat­ing the art­icle and includ­ing links to some of the files needed. Tri­al ISO images of win­dows 7 and new­er install­a­tion disks can be down­loaded dir­ect from Microsoft, so that is prob­ably the easi­est route.

Reply
TTim

Man, thanks so much. All the Microsoft stuff did­n’t help me, so I’m glad I found this great art­icle — I’ve now fixed it all.
God Bless

Reply
JSJon Scaife


niemiro:

Also, and you may not quite know it yet, what you have out­lined here fixes far more than just 0×80073712. In fact, it will fix many Win­dows Update errors, includ­ing the most com­mon of all: 0x800B0100. You could very eas­ily, if you wished, repost this with a few tweaks as a gen­er­al CheckSUR.log fix­ing guide. You really could. 

I might very well con­sider doing that. Unless you would like to write a guest post? or maybe even a full guide? I don’t want to tread on the toes of your own site though — if you’ve got a full guide your­self i’m happy to just link it — cred­it where it’s due afterall

Reply
JSJon Scaife

Thanks for the info! The art­icle you link to is actu­ally about edit­ing the pending.xml file, rather than delet­ing it, but I take your point — delet­ing it would appear to present the same prob­lems as edit­ing. I’ve rejigged the art­icle and added a warn­ing. I did­n’t have to touch the pending.xml file and I would be sur­prised if it is necessary.

Reply
Nniemiro

I deal with these logs quite a bit, and you are cor­rect that delet­ing pending.xml is just as bad as edit­ing it (my link is mis­lead­ing). In fact, the whole link is slightly odd, because the com­mon solu­tion was infact to delete the file. Some people edited the file, and removed prob­lem­at­ic lines, but far more com­monly, the file was just removed.

The pending.xml is used to store changes which are to be made over a re-boot. There­fore, this fix only applies when a com­puter can­not boot after updat­ing, fails to con­fig­ure and reverts, gets stuck on that white writ­ing on black screen updat­ing page, etc. etc. It is not used for fix­ing errors in a CheckSUR.log. In fact, it was com­monly used to fix a 0xC0000034 error upon restart (Safe Mode will also spit back this error)

Unfor­tu­nately, I have recently had to take my web­site off­line, how­ever, it will be back online in a few weeks. Basic­ally, it con­tains a com­pre­hens­ive list (abso­lutely com­pre­hens­ive, I extrac­ted it from the CheckSUR.exe itself) list of every pos­sible error and warn­ing SURT can throw, and then gave my com­ments on how to fix it, and next steps.). I shall post a com­ment here when I bring it back online again, if you are interested.

Also, as an addi­tion­al point, I per­son­ally (when work­ing on the for­um — I cre­ate lots of fixes for Check­SUR logs daily), instead of find­ing files on oth­er com­puters, espe­cially when it comes to lan­guage packs, I often don’t have the files. Per­son­ally, I extract the files from the updates them­selves. Google search for the KB Num­ber, and then down­load it from Microsoft, and then extract the update, using instruc­tiosn (for example here: https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/155584-windows-update-extract-update.html)

To save myself time, I have auto­mated tools which auto­ma­gic­ally extract the update, find the required files, cre­ate a fix, and spit back some BBCode for me to paste to the user! I also have a tool for the user to run which down­loads and runs SURT if required, ana­lyzes the log file, down­loads the updates required, extracts them, extracts the cor­rect files, forms a fix, and fixes the sys­tem. These are not yet released, but will be released at the same time as my new website.

Finally, did you know that if you don’t want to fiddle with per­mis­sions, you can put .mum and .cat files into C:WindowsTempCheckSurServicingPackages and .mani­fest files into C:WindowsTempCheckSurServicingManifests, and re-run SURT, and it will sort it out for you.

How­ever, it does not work for pay­load files, only .mani­fest, .cat, and .mum, and .cat and .mum files MUST be paired up. 

If you are inter­ested, I can send more details. 

Oth­er than that, I thought the art­icle was excel­lent, and the web­site as well. I haven’t truly set foot here before, and I shall cer­tainly be hav­ing a good look now!

It has been great to talk to you!

Richard

Reply
JSJon Scaife

Wow! You really seem to know your stuff on this one. I wish your site had been up 2 days ago when I was try­ing to fix this — this art­icle would just have been a thank you and a link!

I sus­pec­ted it might be pos­sible to get the files from updates, but it was quick­er to pull them from the laptop than to loc­ate the right update, down­load it, and extract it. An auto­mat­ic tool would be the optim­al solution.

You’re wel­come to send more details, but if you’re gonna stick them on your new site that’s just as good — as long as they’re pub­lic its all good. Give me a shout when you’re back up and I’ll have a look (and stick a link into the art­icle above).

Its been a pleas­ure this end too!

Reply
Nniemiro

Hello again!

I have had a look around your web­site, and I really like it! An excel­lent web­site! I com­pletely under­stand that for you, and most people, grabbing the files from anoth­er com­puter is the best and simpest way. Indeed, I used to do that, and still do, occa­sion­ally, when I can­’t work out the KB art­icle a file ori­gin­ates from. How­ever, I just thought that you might like to know the way I do things, espe­cially in bulk and automatically. 

What I par­tic­u­larly like about this art­icle, for I do really like it, is that you have truly cap­tured the spir­it of fix­ing cor­rup­tions detec­ted by SURT. There is a tend­ancy for people who are not famil­i­ar with a cer­tain log file to just ignore it. With equal parts thought and Google, most log files can be cracked. And also, you have cap­tured the read log, extract file names, find replace­ments, replace dam­amged files. Des­pite SURT hav­ing about 4 ways to tell you that a file is cor­rupt (see note at end) it all boils down to this. All to often people jump on the Repair Install band­wag­on when a Win­dows Update error comes up. And I might have been about to fix it in 30 seconds, a few mega­bytes of down­load­ing and an executa­tion of one of my pro­grams. And I often have to fight to post first to pre­vent it. Sad really.

Also, and you may not quite know it yet, what you have out­lined here fixes far more than just 0×80073712. In fact, it will fix many Win­dows Update errors, includ­ing the most com­mon of all: 0x800B0100. You could very eas­ily, if you wished, repost this with a few tweaks as a gen­er­al CheckSUR.log fix­ing guide. You really could. 

Any­way, I bet you are really glad that it is all over now! I really do like your web­site, and this post!

It has been won­der­ful to talk to you!

Richard

P.S. From earli­er, SURT says that a mani­fest is cor­rupt in any of these ways (all very subtly different)

(f) CSI Mani­fest All Zeros
(f) CSI Mani­fest and S256H Do Not Match
(f) CSI Mani­fest Bad XML
(f) CSI Mani­fest Corrupt
(f) CSI Mani­fest Failed Cata­log Check
(f) CSI Mani­fest Missing
(f) CSI Mani­fest Too Small
(f) CSI Mani­fest Unable to Hash
(f) CSI Mani­fest Zero Length 

lol. 146 pos­sible returns with a lot of repe­ti­tion. SURT logs are (mostly) easy!

Reply
Nniemiro

Sorry for the double post! I noticed that you ref­er­enced Microsoft’s guidelines on CheckSUR.log ana­lys­is, but there is in fact a second gen­er­al­ised CheckSUR.log ana­lys­is tutori­al here: https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/108805-system-update-readiness-tool-checksur-log-file-analyzis.html

I men­tion it just in case you haven’t seen it before. For any­thing in more depth (there are 146 pos­sible returns for the log), you will need more spe­cial­ist pages, for there are no more gen­er­ic tutorials.

I hope this helps 🙂

Richard

Reply