I was happily using my ultrabook the other day when I noticed the flag for the Action Center required attention. Upon opening it up, it told me to update my virus and spyware protection. I’m using the Windows 8 built-in Windows Defender, so I was a little surprised it wasn’t being kept up to date automatically. I hit the Update button for Windows Defender and it seemed to take a little longer than normal but the progress bar continued to advance. Eventually, it would return to the Home tab and show the message Connection failed next to ‘Virus and spyware definitions’.
Since I know there is at least one update out there for Windows Defender, I decided to try running Windows Update. Then, once that failed, I tried rebooting and then running Windows Update. It returned an error to me but at least I was given some information.
Code 80070003 – Windows Update ran into a problem.
Code 8024200D – Windows Update ran into a problem.
The “Get help with this error” was useless and it took scouring a few forums that Google returned to find a solution. Microsoft has a Fix It specifically for error 80070003.
I downloaded and ran the windowsupdate.diagcab file which ran through its troubleshooting steps and reported the results to me. It found problems with Windows Update error 0x800F081F and Problems installing recent updates.
After I closed the Fix It utility, Windows Defender was already running updates. After it finished, I was able to complete installing the Windows Updates as well.