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:\windows\windowsupdate.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.
Hopefully this may help some one save a few hours 