Complete List of Windows Update Error Codes

When you troubleshoot the problems of Windows Update, you often come across different error codes. As a rule, when you see a new error in the windowsupdate.log, setup log or Control Panel, you need to googling and compile all available information about the error code you need.

For example, an administrator has come across error 0x80070422 in the log. What does it mean? From the windowsupdate error code it is absolutely not clear what the problem is. What if you could convert it in something more understandable, like ERROR_SERVICE_DISABLED? In this case you can clearly see that there is an issue with disabled Windows service, because of which your Windows cannot download updates. And almost immediately comes to mind checking the BITS service state.

sc query bits

As you can see, BITS is really stopped and Windows Update cannot download new updates. Windows Update error diagnostics has become easier, hasn’t it?

The next table shows the list of all Windows Update errors with their meaning and a brief description, taken from the Windows SDK. I hope this can make it much easier for you to diagnose Windows Update errors. To find the error code, use the search function on the browser page (CTRL + F).