• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Technipages

Tutorials and fixes for smartphone, gadget, and computer problems

  • Topics
    • Android
    • Browsers
    • Gaming
    • Hardware
    • Internet
    • iPhone
    • Linux
    • macOS
    • Office
    • Reviews
    • Software
    • Windows
    • Definitions
  • Product Reviews
  • Downloads
  • About
Windows 7: Fix Code 80243004 Error When Installing Updates

Windows 7: Fix Code 80243004 Error When Installing Updates

September 15, 2020 by Mitch Bartlett 111 Comments

I had several PCs that just didn’t want to install any Windows Updates. After going through the process, the update box would display a message that said “Error(s) found: Code 80243004 – Windows Update encountered an unknown error.” I searched for a solution to this problem for months. Several forums referred me to a few potential fixes, but they never worked for me. Fortunately, I stumbled upon a real fix for this error accidentally.

I actually lived with this being a problem on several PCs for a while without resolution. Then one day I started playing around with the Notification Area settings on one of the problematic PCs. After I changed some settings, I realized later that Windows Updates had miraculously installed on the computer. Could this be the fix?

I tried the following on my other Windows 7 computers:

  1. Open “Control Panel“.
  2. Select the “View by” dropdown in the upper-right corner of the window and select “Large” icons.
  3. Select “Notification Area Icons“.
  4. Check the “Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar“, then click “OK“.
    Always show all icons option

 

For some reason, this did the trick. Windows Update consistently ran after I made this change on all my Windows 7 PCs. Why this worked for me, I’ll never know.

Did this tutorial work for you? Please share your experience in the comments section.

You Might Also Like

  • Fix Error 0x80073701 While Installing Updates
    Fix Error 0x80073701 While Installing Updates
  • Windows 11: How to Fix Error Code 0xc0000005
    Windows 11: How to Fix Error Code 0xc0000005
  • How Do I Fix Error Code 0x800f0950 on Windows 11?
    How Do I Fix Error Code 0x800f0950 on Windows 11?
  • Fix Windows Camera Error Code 0xa00f4244
    Fix Windows Camera Error Code 0xa00f4244
  • How to Fix Windows Installation Error Code 0x80041010
    How to Fix Windows Installation Error Code 0x80041010
  • How to Fix Audio Driver Error Code 52 on Windows PCs
    How to Fix Audio Driver Error Code 52 on Windows PCs

Filed Under: Windows

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Andre Kowalczyk says

    March 14, 2023 at 2:55 pm

    I was updating a very old, circa 2009, laptop. It still works!!!!

  2. Dave Anderson - Toronto says

    September 16, 2022 at 5:02 pm

    Still works Sept 2022 – thank you !

  3. GEORGE says

    May 17, 2022 at 12:52 pm

    Wow, it really works, Thank you!

  4. JA says

    May 3, 2022 at 2:02 pm

    It worked! How did you figure this out?

  5. Bill W says

    March 5, 2022 at 7:01 pm

    Worked for me too !

    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  6. Ron says

    October 4, 2021 at 1:27 pm

    Great advise. I worked for me too.

  7. Cpt. Flint says

    August 26, 2021 at 5:51 am

    Thank you very much, this work!

  8. Cinthia Lavin says

    August 25, 2021 at 7:36 pm

    This really worked!

  9. James Lick says

    August 10, 2021 at 9:31 pm

    Thanks so much! The fix didn’t exactly apply to me as I already had that option set, but it set me on the right track as I noticed the notifications icon area of the taskbar had somehow been squished too small to show everything. Once I unsquished it Windows Update worked normally again. Never would have thought that might be related if I hadn’t found this page.

  10. Kevin R. says

    July 26, 2021 at 3:07 pm

    Still works in July, 2021. As far as I can tell, there’s a weird bug where if the Windows Update icon is set to only show notifications and not always appear, it acts as if windows update isn’t reachable or active. Setting the windows update icon to always appear fixes the issue without the clutter of having a ton of icons in your notification area.

  11. IT Mgr says

    February 27, 2021 at 12:41 am

    Like everyone else says — This worked. Unbelievable — Been looking for a fix for our older machines for awhile. I would have bet against it.

    Thanks Mitch

  12. Turbodiesel says

    December 4, 2020 at 2:35 am

    nope.. :/ mine was already checked, unchecked tried it, restarted tried it rechecked tried restarted again n about every variation in between so… not the problem with this one.. :/

  13. Arunas says

    September 24, 2020 at 8:52 am

    This really worked!
    I checked my notifications and I have about 100 ‘Windows Update’ icons, all with no actual icon except the top one, representing the current update. These things disappeared after the (finally!) successful upgrade and reboot.
    Magic!…

  14. uki baz says

    July 15, 2020 at 9:33 pm

    Couldn”t believe its so TRUEEEEE !!! solved after more than a week.
    thaunkyou so much.. GBU

  15. b says

    July 9, 2020 at 8:52 pm

    HOW in all hell did you find this! worked. Thank you so much!

  16. Steve Felix says

    July 7, 2020 at 11:30 pm

    Yep! Crazy! But it worked for me too. Thanks very much

  17. Steven says

    May 23, 2020 at 5:33 pm

    It worked Thank you

  18. Steven H says

    May 3, 2020 at 9:55 pm

    Hot Diggity Dog! This crazy change fixed the reoccuring error that I was getting on patching Windows Server 2008 R2! Amazing! I salute you!

    Steve H

  19. Steven Healy says

    May 3, 2020 at 9:44 pm

    Hot Diggity Dog! This crazy change fixed the reoccuring error that I was getting on patching Windows Server 2008 R2! Amazing! I salute you!

    Steve H

  20. Mohammed Abdul Quader says

    March 7, 2020 at 2:01 am

    This error is due to the missing Windows Update icon in the task bar. If you set to show just Windows Update icon, it’ll work.

  21. Kevin says

    March 1, 2020 at 3:35 am

    That is so crazy, it actually worked! Why does Windows always have these weird little bugs that just disrupts everything?

    Thank you so much for this fix!!

  22. Niels says

    February 3, 2020 at 1:48 pm

    Dumbest fix ever. But it worked!

  23. sas says

    January 26, 2020 at 8:30 am

    This is the dumbest fix ever (it worked). Trouble getting servicing stack update to install on Server 2008 R2, used this fix or toggled it on/off/on, had to hover my mouse over the notification area to make it clear out some invisible icons… update installed.

  24. Hroj says

    December 27, 2019 at 8:20 am

    It works, thanks.

  25. Greg says

    November 22, 2019 at 1:10 pm

    That is just crazy. I mean, that can’t possibl-

    Asdjk-

    Thanks, Microsoft :/

    And non-sarcastic thanks to Mitch. Gj, man.

  26. Zsigmond Zoltan says

    November 16, 2019 at 1:06 pm

    Thanks @ its also work for mee

  27. Martin Ericsson says

    November 11, 2019 at 3:14 am

    Hero! Thanks!

  28. Dan Q says

    September 28, 2019 at 3:03 pm

    I’ll be damned, that actually worked. Thx man!

  29. Spiff says

    August 26, 2019 at 3:01 pm

    Yep, worked for me too although I did have to go into Notification Icon Area a couple of times and toggle the system icons off and on, check and recheck the always show all icons and notifications, and restore the default icon behaviors before it finally worked. What I noticed then was the “Windows is downloading updates” icon appeared in the taskbar, which I wasn’t seeing before, and its all good. Thanks!

  30. Tony S says

    August 19, 2019 at 12:43 pm

    Wow! It worked for me too!
    I’ve been struggling for a while with this issue. I can’t believe that this works..
    MS really need to get it together. this was an incredible time waster for me.
    Thanks for the Post! Maid My Day.

  31. Mari T BERGESON says

    July 22, 2019 at 10:28 pm

    Yes it did, thank you so much! I would never have dreamed of doing this.

  32. RV says

    July 18, 2019 at 4:05 pm

    Holy Moly, it worked! Thanks dude!

  33. Dee Dee says

    July 9, 2019 at 5:30 pm

    It didn’t work for me. I changed from small to large icons, but ‘always show all icons’ was already checked. I went back to small icons. Next I found something from Microsoft about using a command window for commands ‘net stop’ and ‘net start’ for WuAuServ, which is the service that runs Windows updates. I decided against this.

    Instead I remembered that some updates have to be done before others. The updates for the month of June hadn’t been done yet,, along with 10 other important updates for Windows 7 Pro. Note this is our Skype, et.al. conference computer, so it isn’t on all of the time, which is why it wasn’t updated sooner.

    Bingo! Worked like a charm. June roll-up installed. I restarted as requested. I went and got the other 10 important updates and ran them as a group of 10. For future reference to others, if there is more than 1 monthly roll-up to run, then run the oldest by itself, followed by the next oldest and so on. Then go try the rest of them.

  34. Dave says

    June 13, 2019 at 9:10 am

    I cannot believe it!
    It makes no sense! None! But seems to have worked for me too.
    Y M$??? Y U do dis?
    Thanks, Mitch, for the sleuthing and sharing!
    (Tinfoil hat time: No proof, but I suspect some telemetry is enabled by this.)

  35. VN says

    June 11, 2019 at 10:03 am

    hehe , it’s work , thanks man !

  36. Kathie says

    June 6, 2019 at 8:46 pm

    OMG you are awesome, not even going to try and figure out why but worked like a charm.
    I never have this kind of luck finding fixes for these types of things, thank you so much!

  37. Dan says

    May 20, 2019 at 11:50 am

    ??? Seriously? Why did this work? Yeah, it works.

  38. jemonly says

    April 26, 2019 at 11:41 am

    Hahaha. It worked for me too!!!! Thank you.

  39. Julio Castillo says

    April 11, 2019 at 6:36 pm

    It worked for me, thanks a lot !!

  40. PDy says

    April 9, 2019 at 11:31 am

    Why ??? Thank you for your help. Unbelievable but working .

  41. Mark says

    April 1, 2019 at 3:11 pm

    I would say: without this article, I would not able to find the solution, as it doesn’t make sense that notification setting is related to Windows Update… I really really appreciate you sharing this solution to us. Thank you Mitch!

  42. T Coburn says

    March 30, 2019 at 3:58 pm

    Worked on an LENOVO ThinkCentre running Win7Pro64 that I connected for the first time since 10/15 to do updates. Thx!!!

  43. otis says

    March 28, 2019 at 9:49 pm

    holy crap this worked for me too!!!!!!! lol!!

  44. DDR says

    March 27, 2019 at 2:37 pm

    Either this worked, just restarting or both. I came across just restarting first, but kept checking for more ideas.

    I’ve saved this for future reference. Thanks so much!

  45. Oleksandr says

    March 21, 2019 at 1:47 pm

    I also worked! Thank you!

  46. ScottS says

    February 28, 2019 at 3:53 pm

    Yes, worked for me too. The update had been hanging up with the “preparing for update” message, and then the error code 80243004 appeared after that timed out. Once I made the change and restarted the update, the download began, and the updates got installed.

    Strange!

  47. Loren Pechtel says

    February 24, 2019 at 12:03 pm

    What sort of insanity is this?! Worked for me also–virtual machine that hadn’t been updated for nearly a year.

  48. Tomas says

    January 27, 2019 at 1:07 pm

    Wow! Worked for me.

  49. CodePrime8 says

    January 9, 2019 at 9:42 am

    This did not work for the following:
    2018-12 Secuirty Monthly Quality Rollup for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB4471318)

    However, this did work for the following:
    Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool x64 – January 2019 (KB890830)

    Running:
    Windows 7 x64, on domain.

  50. Bozo says

    January 3, 2019 at 10:48 am

    Yes, that fixed it. THANKS!

  51. Donna Burkett says

    November 20, 2018 at 10:42 am

    Thank you! This worked perfectly.

  52. e lindenburg says

    October 28, 2018 at 8:00 am

    Worked great! TNX!!!

  53. Jaime says

    October 11, 2018 at 2:51 pm

    OMG…that worked! This has been happening for months now.

  54. Alan says

    September 20, 2018 at 5:18 pm

    Yes it worked!!

  55. Brandi says

    September 17, 2018 at 2:42 pm

    Holy moley. I cannot believe that worked. What the H ms?

  56. C Frederick says

    September 13, 2018 at 7:12 am

    I can’t believe that’s all it took to finally allow updates on my 2008 Server. I also only changed the Windows Update line, not all. Thank you so much!

  57. H.I.S. Royal Christian Academy says

    September 8, 2018 at 7:57 am

    Thanks. Just what I needed to tune up a Windows 7 desktop. Works great.

  58. Jussi Palo says

    August 28, 2018 at 2:34 am

    Fixed my issue, thanks!

  59. Craig Belisle says

    August 7, 2018 at 12:39 pm

    It solved the issue on a 2008 server! Thank you!

  60. Mom from Sweden says

    August 2, 2018 at 9:06 am

    You are a genious. I´ve been sitting with my sons computer all day trying to figure it out. Thank you for sharing!

  61. John says

    July 27, 2018 at 2:43 pm

    It did solve my problem tx!

  62. Andrew says

    May 11, 2018 at 4:47 pm

    Nope didn’t resolve my issue.

  63. Steve says

    March 31, 2018 at 5:18 pm

    I don’t know how you figured out that fix but it worked for me and I wish I read your fix before reading and trying a bunch of stuff. Thanks very much..:)

  64. Tony891 says

    January 25, 2018 at 7:36 am

    Actually MS did post this fix in Jan, 2017. However, it is only the Windows Update Icon that needs to be changed, not all.

  65. js says

    December 12, 2017 at 4:42 pm

    Worked perfectly, I had used this fix a number of years ago, but had completely forgotten about it. As usual, MS was useless with their suggested fixes.

    Thank you!

  66. Lane says

    November 15, 2017 at 8:57 pm

    What a bizarre fix. It worked! Thank you so much.

  67. Fevita says

    November 3, 2017 at 9:37 am

    Yeah it did work perfect. Thank You so much for sharing it!

  68. Fraggle says

    November 1, 2017 at 1:32 pm

    Worked great! Wow weird

  69. Melissa says

    October 15, 2017 at 3:43 pm

    Wow! This worked great! I haven’t been able to install updates for 2 years (I’ve tried all the fixes, my screen just endlessly would say “checking for updates”, Today my computer failed to start properly, so I rebooted and ran the recommended “windows restore” on the startup screen, then I ran updates, got the error, did your fix, and voila!! Thank you very much.

  70. Alessandro says

    October 7, 2017 at 3:59 pm

    It worked just fine for me too. Thank you very much for having shared it!

  71. S g brown says

    August 27, 2017 at 4:33 pm

    great worked for me first time just cant believe it thx

  72. JS says

    August 4, 2017 at 10:53 am

    Thanks! Tried to solve this for weeks without success. This really works! :)

  73. Javed Salim says

    July 11, 2017 at 10:20 am

    I can’t believe but this indeed works. Not just Windows 7. I had the issue in Windows 2008 R2 as well and this did the trick.

  74. NoelD. says

    June 26, 2017 at 4:14 pm

    At first I couldn’t believe this simple solution, but it works !!!
    Thanks :)

  75. LGG says

    May 19, 2017 at 5:02 pm

    So strange but it worked! Thank you so much!

  76. David A. Adler says

    May 16, 2017 at 8:25 pm

    I have had this same issue with a number of my physical workstations, and also with 2 of my HyperV ones. I worked for all of them. I would also like to make note of, and thank the author of the comment;
    JOEL C. EWING says
    March 23, 2017 at 1:52 pm
    The fix on the virtual machines did not work until I had maximized the window after making the prescribed change to the notification icons as he said. I’m not sure I would necessarily have have figured that one out myself or not.
    I’m currently trying to patch everything in advance of what is sure to be a repeat attack by the authors of the WannCry worm that was released over the weekend.

  77. Chris says

    May 16, 2017 at 4:42 am

    I was about to rebuild the PC from scratch, this saved me hours thank you.

  78. Anne says

    May 15, 2017 at 6:16 am

    I’ve been struggling with this for years! Can’t believe that doing this actually works. Totally brilliant! Thankyou :-)

  79. Dan says

    May 8, 2017 at 9:13 pm

    Brilliant! I have no idea how you discovered that, but that did it. Thank you very much!

  80. April says

    May 4, 2017 at 10:25 am

    Unbelievable! Thank you so much, I spent several hours trying to update 1/4 of our office and kept running into this issue.

  81. Niculae says

    April 28, 2017 at 2:05 pm

    Amazing! This worked for me too! Many thanks!

  82. AJ says

    April 28, 2017 at 12:18 am

    Worked perfectly for me after applying these instructions then reboot my PC and running windows update again. Thanks a lot.

  83. Roberto says

    April 13, 2017 at 1:59 pm

    Worked perfectly just as you described! Totally awesome!! Thanks amigo!

  84. peter says

    April 9, 2017 at 2:38 am

    This is flippen seriously amazing. I have spent/wasted hours on this problem (including MS diagnostics and repair utilities) all to no avail and this simple trick fixed it!! Unbelievable, inexplicable but really helpful. Thanks for sharing this Mitch!!

  85. Russ says

    April 5, 2017 at 11:44 pm

    Mitch,

    Crazy… this worked for me too. Thanks a ton for the tip. I never would’ve just stumbled across this “solution”.

  86. Joel C. Ewing says

    March 23, 2017 at 1:52 pm

    I had this problem with a Windows 7 VM under VirtualBox. Just changing the “always show…” option by itself didn’t seem to work, but changing the VM display to Full-screen and then dickering with the taskbar and notification always show settings and running Update while still in full-screen did seem to do the trick. I’m guessing maybe there is also some kind of issue with dynamically changing the size of the display that WIndows 7 sees that affects notification support.

    On retrying the updates, I immediate got a bubble notification at the task bar that Updates were in progress, which I was not getting before and the actual install of updates (as opposed to “Preparing…”) commenced. It would appear that the cause for the 80243004 failure in this case was some kind of timeout failure while attempting to display the notification message that updates were beginning. and that would perhaps explain why playing with notification configuration options to get notifications working properly affects the outcome.

  87. Brian says

    March 15, 2017 at 1:42 pm

    That is the craziest thing I ever heard, I must say it worked.

    Thank you

  88. Vince says

    February 28, 2017 at 2:21 pm

    Ridiculous resolution but IT WORKED!

    Thanks for the heads up.

  89. Gerard says

    February 20, 2017 at 4:14 am

    Genius! Thank you. The box was already ticked, so I unticked it, rebooted, reticked it and rebooted again and 85 updates are now installing like a dream.

  90. Claudia says

    February 15, 2017 at 4:21 pm

    Sure did work after a couple restarts! Thanks!!

  91. MsCanada says

    February 14, 2017 at 10:21 pm

    Wow absolutely ridiculously worked on my Lenovo. I am hoping the 75 updates to Windows 7 will correct the suddenly wonky key board typing. I.e.when I hit an s key it automatically types in sdf, a T will often randomly become caps etc… You cannot type a single word without many extra surrounding letters. It’s like suddenly the wiring got screwed up. One minute it’s ok…then it’s possessed!

  92. Peter Fales says

    February 4, 2017 at 5:18 pm

    Amazing! Worked for me too!

  93. Brigitte says

    February 2, 2017 at 7:09 am

    It worked for me too !! Thanks.

  94. Carole says

    February 2, 2017 at 2:41 am

    Worked for me too–thanks much! Must be another crazy MS change.

    It’s probably related to an update or updates not recognizing programs included under Hidden Icons, which is a pain since I don’t like having all those icons shown on the taskbar!

    Think I will try UNchecking “show all icons” until I next check for more updates. Then I’ll check it again!

  95. deuxbits says

    January 26, 2017 at 1:56 pm

    Incredible – It works! Thank you for noticing this and writing it up.
    And at the risk of being vulgar – WTF!? This is so so weird. I’m thinking that in the update process it goes to change the notification icon and that is where it fails if that setting is not switched on…. Bizarro

  96. Emilio says

    January 23, 2017 at 11:56 am

    It’s crazy, worked for me!!
    Thanks

  97. Vic says

    January 23, 2017 at 6:51 am

    Wow how come it works!?

    It worked for me as well. It’s been headache for me for a while.

    Thanks a lot

  98. GeeBee says

    January 4, 2017 at 10:21 am

    This is the craziest thing…it worked like a champ!!

  99. Paul says

    December 13, 2016 at 7:10 am

    It really did work after several restarts. Thanks a lot.

  100. Glenn says

    October 15, 2016 at 11:27 pm

    Wow. I didn’t really think this would fix the problem but it actually did. I don’t know why this works but it does. Windows still takes over 12 hours to “check for updates” but at least it now installs them once it has finished checking for them.

  101. Martin Lee says

    September 23, 2016 at 12:24 pm

    Wow, it really works, Thank you

  102. maf says

    September 7, 2016 at 11:59 pm

    Great! It works!

  103. Laurie says

    August 24, 2016 at 11:04 am

    This worked on Win 2008 server. Thanks so much!!

  104. Jim says

    August 22, 2016 at 11:26 am

    I cant believe this worked!! I was fighting with this for hours on 2 of my Windows 2008 R2 servers.Thank you :)

  105. Jin says

    July 29, 2016 at 6:39 am

    Thank you so much. I was also skeptical because it seemed unrelated. But it worked. Using windows 7 home premium and SP1. I did not have an update since 2014 but now it works. Thank you. Saved my day really.

  106. JTPIII says

    July 28, 2016 at 3:34 pm

    Okay! What the heck?! There is absolutely NO reason toggling the notification icon setting should affect windows update. Thank you for posting this. BTW this worked for me as I was trying to get the Windows 10 upgrade before the deadline. I had two other PC’s that had the same problem but they needed a reboot to complete the process.

  107. Wiz says

    July 28, 2016 at 11:05 am

    So, the reality of this “Fix” is that you really only need to set the Windows Update Icon to “Show icon and notifications”, the rest can be left as-is.

  108. hartvix says

    July 16, 2016 at 4:46 am

    Incredible! I’ve had the same problem for a long time on one of my computers, and googled the error code. I wasn’t too optimistic when trying this, it just sounded too unrelated, but I gave it a shot. Voila! Thanks for stumbling over this, worked for me too. :-)

  109. FRP says

    July 13, 2016 at 9:16 am

    Wow! is right! That for some reason enabled the updates to start downloading.. weird.

  110. KPB says

    June 24, 2016 at 12:26 pm

    WOW! What a mystery. This setting was already enabled on the PC I was having issues with. I unchecked the box, then rechecked it and like MAGIC I was able to get all updates. THANK YOU so much! I don’t know if I ever would have thought to try this otherwise. You’re my hero of the day!

  111. Bill Crabill says

    June 20, 2016 at 10:36 am

    Tried this procedure, but It was already enabled. What I found was that my system clock was off by 2 hours. Corrected that and updates installed.

Did this help? Let us know!

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • How to Reset Root Password on Steam Deck
  • How to Update Steam Deck
  • Fixed Error Code: Out of Memory on Windows 11 Web Browsers
  • How to Play Minecraft on Chromebooks
  • Windows 11: How to Access and Use the Free Sound Recorder App
  • How to Enable Split-Screen in Microsoft Edge
  • How to Use Microsoft PowerToys in Windows 11/10
  • How to Turn Steam Deck Into Desktop PC

Who’s Behind Technipages?

Baby and Daddy My name is Mitch Bartlett. I've been working in technology for over 20 years in a wide range of tech jobs from Tech Support to Software Testing. I started this site as a technical guide for myself and it has grown into what I hope is a useful reference for all.

You May Also Like

  • Windows 95/98
  • Microsoft Windows NT
  • Microsoft Windows
  • Microsoft Windows 95
  • Windows Media Player (WMP)

© Copyright 2023 Guiding Tech Media · All Rights Reserved · Privacy