Windows Update Error 80072EE2 – Hyper-V Guest issues….

Over this weekend I have had to quickly build a Virtual SBS2008 server for one of my clients.   I came across an interesting issue which took me a while to figure out, so I am plonking it up here on the blog so that others that may come across the problem will find it quicker.

A quick description of the setup.

Dell Poweredge Server, Onboard Broadcom Netxtreme II network card, Addon gigabit NIC from SMC networks (Realtek chipset).   Windows 2008 R2 is on the HyperV Host.  SBS2008 is installed as the only Guest on the HyperV setup.   This is all behind a Sonicwall NSA240 on a dedicated LAN network.

The SBS2008 Virtual machine would not update from Windows Update and the log file (c:windowswindowsupdate.log) was showing a lot of errors with the code 80072EE2.   When you search for this on the internet it makes mention of reinstalling the various DLL’s involved with Windows Update, and also ensuring that your network settings are not blocking connections to the Windows Update servers.   None of these suggestions helped me.

So, I decided to do some packet captures on the network whilst Windows Update was running.   It turned out that every time Windows Update ran on the SBS Virtual Machine, it could no longer ping the default gateway (yet the host machine could).   This pointed me back to the network cards….

What I found odd about this is that I had already installed the latest drivers for the Broadcom and the Realtek chipsets.  I had also disabled the various offloading options on the physical network cards to see if that would help, but no change.

However, after a coffee, I realised that I was missing one step…    the step that fixed this problem was:

I disabled the Offload options on the Microsoft Virtual Network card on the SBS Host, and as soon as I did that, Windows update started to work.

Offload

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hopefully this may help some one save a few hours

 

  17 Replies to “Windows Update Error 80072EE2 – Hyper-V Guest issues….”

  1. November 15, 2009 at 7:39 pm

    Thanks for the great post, Nick! Worked like a charm when nothing else had 🙂

    Jason

  2. Toby
    November 25, 2009 at 9:01 pm

    Thank you very much. This was exactly what I was looking for and immediately fixed my problem!

    Thank you again!
    Toby

  3. Marten
    January 4, 2010 at 8:37 am

    Thank you very much, finaly solved the problem!!!!

  4. February 24, 2010 at 3:32 pm

    Nick, you are the man!!

    -Tim Barrett

  5. The Other Tim
    March 1, 2010 at 8:36 pm

    After 6 hours of this I though I was loosing my mind – you post fixed it in 30 seconds. Uh – can I have a ride in that Cobra you got?

  6. Jon
    April 8, 2010 at 6:59 pm

    Nice troubleshooting skills. worked great. Thanks again

  7. Jon
    April 8, 2010 at 6:59 pm

    Nice troubleshooting skills. worked great. Thanks again

  8. Thomas Dzieran
    April 28, 2010 at 12:07 pm

    Thank you very much! Spent 15 hours trying to fix it.
    Your post fixt it in 15 seconds.
    Thank you.

  9. Guinness
    April 30, 2010 at 2:26 pm

    Thanks again, worked on W2k8 R2 Enterprise with Realtek. Good job!

  10. El Kabong
    May 4, 2010 at 10:20 pm

    Dude, thanks ALOT. Got the error on my first VM and this fixed it instantly.

  11. one Mike
    May 19, 2010 at 10:43 pm

    You just saved me a ton of work. Thanks so much for sharing the solution.

    FYI, you do have to disable those settings on BOTH the physical NIC and the virtual one.

  12. Duke
    June 17, 2010 at 6:23 am

    Well done Sir! Now I just need to find out what those Checksum offload settings are for. 🙂

  13. jjoslin
    July 17, 2010 at 12:17 am

    You are AWESOME.. I would have never found this without your help….. THANK YOU!!!!

  14. Jesse
    October 18, 2010 at 10:38 pm

    THANK YOU!! I was at wits end with this problem.

  15. Anderson Araujo
    November 9, 2010 at 5:14 am

    Thank you so much, it worked!!!

  16. December 8, 2010 at 9:39 pm

    Thanks for this post. Was going crazy reinstalling Virtual machines with no luck.

  17. Tim Kremer
    December 14, 2010 at 11:29 pm

    Nice Work! I’ve set up many HV boxes in and just recently came accross this problem for the first time. I spent a lot of time on it and was stumped as web access, dns, etc was working just fine from this guest. BTW, Windows Activation was also not working, but this fixed it.

    Again, nice work!

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