On a couple of my PCs now I’ve had a problem where Microsoft Update stopped working, reporting the error code 0x8002802B. Looking this up in the Microsoft knowledge base yielded no results, but a quick Google and I found a “Fix it” utility from Microsoft. Sadly, that didn’t fix the problem.

After much trawling I found an answer – and this worked for both instances (both of which occurred months apart).

Either, open up the command prompt (click on Start, Run and type type in CMD) and type each of the following lines in one at a time OR cut and paste them into a .BAT file and run that (I do the later).

REGSVR32 MSXML3.DLL
REGSVR32 WUAPI.DLL
REGSVR32 WUAUENG.DLL
REGSVR32 WUAUENG1.DLL
REGSVR32 WUPS2.DLL
REGSVR32 WUCLTUI.DLL
REGSVR32 WUPS.DLL
REGSVR32 WUWEB.DLL
REGSVR32 QMGR.DLL
REGSVR32 QMGRPRXY.DLL
REGSVR32 JSCRIPT.DLL

You’ll have to click “OK” when each line is run, but there’s no reboot required – simply restart Internet Explorer and try out Microsoft Update again.

I should add too, that automatic updates from the system tray still appear to work when this error occurs.