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Windows Update Fail – 0xC80003F3

This is the case of one of those bizarre and very annoying issues to tack down.  The server in question is one of my lab servers where an automated build was used to create it.  It is a Windows 2008 R2 SP1 based server which has TMG 2010 SP2 installed as a reverse proxy.  Said server has been a little “squirrely”, and some “interesting things have happened where a restart would flush the gremlins out.  It managed to soldier on and worked. 

After the last patch Tuesday I could not get the server to scan for updates.  There were a multitude of errors noted by the Windows Update client.  The data below is from the WindowsUpdate.log and you can see just how varied the errors are.  To keep one of my older friends happy, yes that is you Charles Of the Desert, let’s use findstr to parse the log looking for the specific phrase:

Findstr.exe /i /c:"Warning: exit code =" WindowsUpdate.log

More Windows Update Error Codes Than You Can Shake A Stick At

Using Excel, the de-duplicated list of errors were:

WARNING: Exit code = 0x80244023 

WARNING: Exit code = 0x80072EE2

WARNING: Exit code = 0x8024D011 

WARNING: Exit code = 0x8024001B

WARNING: Exit code = 0x800401FD 

WARNING: Exit code = 0x8007000E

WARNING: Exit code = 0xC80003F3 

WARNING: Exit code = 0x8024402F

WARNING: Exit code = 0x80080005

 

The error codes are all over the place so there is not single issue in the WU client that explains all of them.  Time to expand the net….

 

Event Log Entries

Looking at the event logs there were some items of note: 

EventID 2004 Windows Successfully Diagnosed A Low Memory Condition

 

EventID 7023 Windoes Modules Installer Service Terminated Due To Insufficient System Resources

 

Interesting, but nothing there screamed at a root cause.   Though why is Windows complaining about low resources, and then the Windows Modules Installer terminated due to insufficient resources?

 

640K Is All You’ll Ever Need

The server in question is a VM with 3GB of RAM installed, and task manager shows plenty of available memory.  Yes that is not a perfect check but it’s generally sufficient for a quick peek.  So if there is enough physical memory installed, but did the automated build set page file to match the RAM?

256MB Page File - Seriously??

<Borat>

Not so much….

</Borat>

 

OK, We Need More Than 640K

For some reason, the automated build had set the server with a single static page file of only 256 MB.  If this was a NT4 server and the year was 1999 then that would be good.  In the year 2014, it was far less than awesome…. 

Increasing the page file to match physical RAM immediately corrected the issues and Windows Update then installed all updates!

Cheers,

Rhoderick

Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

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