Windows​Update problem

Since about a month updates are failing to install. Help links don't give me any helpful solutions, the WindowsUpdate Fixme didn't work (both standard and agressive) and the System Update Readiness didn't work either. The windowsupdate.log doesn't provide any useful information but I did find something weird in the cbs.log:

2011-05-15 00:47:23, Error                 CSI    00000009 (F) STATUS_RM_NOT_ACTIVE #154# from Windows::Rtl::SystemImplementation::DirectRegistryProvider::SysOpenKey(flg = 0, key = {provider=NULL, handle=0}, da = (KEY_SET_VALUE|KEY_WOW64_64KEY), oa = @0x17ff0e0->OBJECT_ATTRIBUTES {s:48; rd:NULL; on:[28]"\Registry\Machine\COMPONENTS"; a:(OBJ_CASE_INSENSITIVE)}, disp = Unmapped disposition: 25162328 (0x017ff258))[gle=0xd0190005]
2011-05-15 00:47:23, Error                 CSI    0000000a@2011/5/14:22:47:23.902 (F) d:\w7rtm\base\wcp\sil\merged\ntu\ntsystem.cpp(3676): Error STATUS_RM_NOT_ACTIVE originated in function Windows::Rtl::SystemImplementation::DirectRegistryProvider::SysOpenKey expression: (null)
[gle=0x80004005]

This must be some kind of serious error because a WER report is being made from this error. Unfortunately no solution is available.

What version of Windows is it? Which update is it failing on?

Often a problem is just that you haven't rebooted recently enough (there's an internal lock for updates held by the MSI installer which can get screwy). It's definitely worth rebooting and trying again with no programs running, even if that is somewhat cliche'd (I for one never reboot - I always hibernate so you might not have rebooted cleanly in months)

You get a WER report because whoever wrote that update isn't propagating the error code upwards, and are probably ending up doing a null-dereference to crash wuacult.

If all of this doesn't work, try and do a system restore. This will clear out any bad updates that you might have recently downloaded and put you back to a "clean" state.

• I'm running Windows 7 SP1.
• I always reboot the system. With my SSD I can't put it in stand-by.
• The update that fails is http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2446710 

When I have Process Monitor open it records these calls at the same time as the errors in cbs.log occur:

Why is the result 0xC0190005 ?

0xC0190005 is STATUS_RM_NOT_ACTIVE which means "Transaction support within the specified file system resource manager was not started or was shut down due to an error".

Your best bet with any Windows Update errors is to try and roll back using System Restore. System Restore only changes files and folders in your system directory, so it won't kill any of your other files so you shouldn't need a full backup (although there's certainly no harm in doing so).

After performing a System Restore, reboot the machine and then force a refresh of Windows Update by asking Windows Update to "search for updates".

If this doesn't work, or it keeps happening even after you roll back, you have two choices:
A) Leave it alone and it will go away. It'll take a while but Microsoft release "super patches" which fix Window Update, and the very fact that Windows Update is failing on your machine will be being reported to Microsoft via the Windows Update Automated Error Reporting Tool.

B) If you really really want to get those updates (and let's face it, who doesn't want their juicy goodness) you can try flushing the transaction queue by clearing the files in %SystemRoot%/config/TxR. These are all of the transacted registry update files created by Windows Update / TransactedRegistry. Wiping them and then rebooting might fix your registry, but bear in mind that messing with the registry and files in %SystemRoot% it might also hose your system, so be warned and backup your files (no really) before you do this.

@evildictaitor: This has been going for a month so I don't have any restore point which is that old.

c:/windows/syswow64/config/TxR is empty. For now I'm not going to mess with the registry.

So the STATUS_RM_NOT_ACTIVE code doesn't tell me any details about the error that happened.

54 minutes ago, ZippyV wrote

@evildictaitor: This has been going for a month so I don't have any restore point which is that old.

c:/windows/syswow64/config/TxR is empty. For now I'm not going to mess with the registry.

So the STATUS_RM_NOT_ACTIVE code doesn't tell me any details about the error that happened.

I get random WU errors occasionally too. I find downloading the manual patches and installing them myself (rather than going through WU) sorts the problem out. Have you tried that?

@RhymesWithOrange: Which event logs are you interested in?

@W3bbo: Tried it but it fails too.

Logs available here: http://home.scarlet.be/~zippyv/downloads/WindowsUpdate-logs-zippyv.zip

18:55 Check for updates

18:57 Install update

@ZippyV: Possibly related to a previous message:

TrustedInstaller service was not set as autostart, or else a reboot is still pending.

TrustedInstaller was set to Manual but setting it to automatic and starting it didn't solve the problem. A reboot is not pending.

16 hours ago, RhymesWith​Orange wrote

You are saying this has been happening for a month now... what last happened that was out of the ordinary in the month? I mean, you were getting updates without a problem, then something happened, and now you can't.. so what happened?

I looked into the reliability history and noticed the problems began the same day as when Office 2010 updates were (sucessfuly) installed. That might have messed up the TxF system.

My problem is SOLVED thanks to Magic​Andre1981:

The NTFS transaction manager is broken. Delete all files (*.*) from C:\Windows\System32\config\TxR, next run

fsutil resource setautoreset true C:\

Don't forget to set the folder options to show all system and hidden files otherwise the TxR directory will look empty.

nice to hear that it is now fixed