“Failure configuring Windows updates. Reverting changes” on a Lenovo Laptop

July 12, 2013 3 Comments

I recently had to apply Windows updates to a new Lenovo laptop running Windows 8. There were about 50 or so updates to apply, but each time I tried to install them I received the following error message on reboot:

“Failure configuring Windows Updates. Reverting Changes”

After the reboot had completed, I examined the update history and found that none of the updates had installed and all were marked as failed. I did a bit of digging, and in the end it turned out that this is a common problem with Lenovo laptops and was caused by a service called the ‘Nalpeiron Licensing Service’. I am not sure why this is pre installed, but it appears that it is not an essential service, so I simply opened the services console (services.msc) and stopped and then disabled this service. After completing this action Windows updates installed without error.

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Windows 7 SP1 installation fails with error 0x800f0818

August 7, 2012 5 Comments

I came across a peculiar problem today trying to install SP1 on a Windows 7 laptop. Whenever I ran the Windows 7 SP1 installer or tried to update to SP1 using Windows Update the installation failed with a cryptic error ‘0x800f0818‘. I tried various things such as running sfc /scannow and installing the Windows 7 System Readiness Tool (64 bit in my case), but neither reported problems.

After a bit of digging I found an entry in the CheckSUR log file found in C:\Windows\Logs\CBS which seemed to be related. In this case a .Net Framework update had failed to install a few times and this particular update was referenced in the log file:

Checking Windows Servicing Packages

Checking Package Manifests and Catalogs (f) CBS MUM Corrupt 0x00000000 servicing\Packages\Package_for_KB979916_RTM~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.0.mum  Expected file name Microsoft-Windows-Foundation-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.7600.16385.mum does not match the actual file name

Checking Package Watchlist

Checking Component Watchlist

Checking Packages

Checking Component Store

Summary: Seconds executed: 485  Found 1 errors   CBS MUM Corrupt Total count: 1

Unavailable repair files:  servicing\packages\Package_for_KB979916_RTM~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.0.mum  servicing\packages\Package_for_KB979916_RTM~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.0.cat

To fix the problem I had to remove entries for the corrupt package from the registry (IMPORTANT: taking a backup first) from:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Component Based Servicing\Packages

The specific entries are shown below. There are two, the highlighted entry, and the one beneath:

Deleting corrupt package entries from the registry

 

After deleting the two entries I reran Windows Update checking for updates and this package was redownloaded and then installed without issue. After this the service pack 1 installation proceeded without error. You may find that the specific update referenced in your CheckSUR log is different to the one mentioned here, but the method is the same.

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Generate a new SID on Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7

February 27, 2012 11 Comments

With the NewSID tool no longer supported by Microsoft for more recent versions of Windows, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to generate a new SID on a Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7 computer, and wonder which tool you need to use. I myself have run across an issue in the past in our development environment where duplicate SIDs caused a problem. Care needs to be taken when cloning Windows virtual machines, particularly if they will later be used as domain controllers.

In order to avoid any issues like this, the new preferred method to set a new SID on a Windows machine is to use Sysprep. Before running Sysprep, you may wish to verify the current SID on the sytem that you wish to modify. This can easily be done by running the psgetsid utility, which is part of the excellent Pstools developed by Mark Russinovich. The output of the psgetsid command can be seen below, showing the current machine SID:

Output of psgetsid before running Sysprep on Windows Server 2008 R2

 Next you can sysprep by running the following command:

C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\sysprep.exe

Running Sysprep
 
On the Sysprep, screen make sure that you tick the ‘Generalize’ tick box as shown below:
 

Choose settings for the System Preparation Tool

 The Sysprep process will take a few minutes to run, and will automatically reboot the system if you chose to do so. On reboot, the following screen will be displayed. Click ‘Next’ to continue:

 

Click next to continue the Sysprep process

 After the sysprep process is complete, you can run psgetsid again to verify that a new SID has been generated for this computer:

Output of psgetsid after running Sysprep on Windows Server 2008 R2

 

 
 
 

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