Code error 80072EFE during Windows Update

THIS WORKED A TREAT.

Microsoft and Acer could not help me with this problem but you sorted it straight away.

Thanks a million

Rob

Mosty likely, the computer may be infected with ROOTKITS.

Try to run TDSSKILLER to find any rootkits.

Download and run from here

http://support.kaspersky.com/downloads/utils/tdsskiller.exe

 

Having tried every other suggestion, this was the answer for me

XP Home edition

Many, many thanks

---

If this post answers your question, please mark it as the Answer.

Mike H

I meant to mark the rootkill suggestion as the answer - dont know how to unmark this particular post.  It got rid of my problem in 5 min - sometimes trying something simple first is well worth trying - especially when its known to have a good track record for fixes.

Shouldn't the checkmark be moved to the suggestion to use rootkiller?     There seems to be alot of people showing these same symptoms in other threads.   The forums aren't helping if they are crediting the answers to suggestions that aren't getting much positive feedback for being helpful to remedy their problem - as in this thread.

We shall alert the media.

PA Bear,

I propose this to be a very useful thing to do - at least alert the microsoft answers forum that the tdssrootkill should be the first thing to try if they cant update and get the 80072efe error code.   If you look at how many multiple threads there are with this same exact problem, it is very likely that most people looking for help are not going to find the very few posts that have the best fix for their problem.   Me thinks trying something easy and fast is worth trying first, before spending time reading through areas that are too broad.

This was, as another commenter said, a very elegant fix.   There was only two steps - run the scan and then select "cure".   Nothing to read and no multiple steps to possibly do something wrong.     That is important and appreciated by this rookie.   The scan was very fast too.

The true answer to this problem should be ramesh's post, given how the public feedback indicates it is.   In fact, when looking through countless posts with this same problem, the post credited with being the "answer" is usually not being confirmed by comments from the public, as a suitable remedy for their problem.  I've had this problem since july (same timeframe mentioned by others) and tried many things, but running the rootkill tool was the only thing that got rid of every annoying problem plaguing me.   That included webpages opening on their own to a sales audio selling a pure scam - and sometimes my not being fast enough to close the screen before being trapped in a whack-a-mole situation of trying to close out a deceptively tenacious dialog boxes (asking me if im sure that i want to close the box - without hearing their next ad lined up!!!) - or opening to dialog boxes that just needed my click to start downloading a program i didn't ask for.... also the machine crashed and rebooted every our or so.   Updates couldn't be downloaded, nor was loading programs to find the problem..  My firefox browser often wouldn't open, desktop sometimes dissapeared - only restoring to an earlier checkpoint would get me back to at least able to use a browser,....

None of these problems are present after running tdssrootkill.   Other people should get this remedy too.  Please alert someone.

How did the virus get in?   I may have been responsible, but am not certain.   My avenquest anti-malware (sbam - sunbelt anti-malware?) was slowing down my computer so much that i occasionally turned it off with taskmanager when it got too annoying.   I'm going to assume the malware got in on one of those times, so will not turn it off in the future. 

Why didn't my AV detect it?  Good question.  It detected one trojan and quarantined it, but left the rootkill there.

I was having the same error message. I couldn't get Windows Update or Microsoft Security Essentials to update.

Can I install Microsoft Security Essentials [or any other anti-virus/anti-spyware application] to clean up my already-infected computer?

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/msescan/thread/87058857-d181-4019-a723-efd9a49d9275 

~Robear Dyer (PA Bear) ~ MS MVP (IE, Mail, Security, Windows & Update Services) since 2002 ~ Disclaimer: MS MVPs neither represent nor work for Microsoft