Microsoft launches a Windows error code troubleshooting site

If you have used Windows for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly been hit with an error code during an Update that told you absolutely nothing. “Error code: 0x80070422?” What the hell does that mean? 

If you were industrious, you could Google the code and maybe find a post on a Microsoft forum or elsewhere that offered some kind of clue as to what the error was and perhaps a solution. 

Now Microsoft has given us something a little more official. It’s a web page on the company’s support site called Fix Windows Update Errors that aims to help Windows users resolve update-related errors.

The page greets you with this message: 

This guided walk-through provides steps to fix problems when installing updates. Here are some commonly seen error codes: 0x80073712, 0x800705B4, 0x80004005, 0x8024402F, 0x80070002, 0x80070643, 0x80070003, 0x8024200B, 0x80070422, 0x80070020. These steps should help with all errors and not just the ones listed. 

It supports Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. The site offers different options based on the operating system you select. 

If you select Windows 10, you will be asked to download the Windows Update Troubleshooter and run it. For Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 users, you get different troubleshooters for their respective operating systems. 

Some of the repair options provided by the tool: 

• Repair Windows Update Database corruption.
• Repair Windows update components.
• Fix Windows Firefox blocking connections to Windows Update on the PC.
• Contact a network or system administrator, or ISP, to fix internet connectivity issues.
• Check whether default Windows Update data locations have changed.
• Fix improperly configured security settings, or missing settings.
• Check for missing or corrupt files.
• Fix service registration is missing or corrupt.
• Fix system date and time aren’t correct.

It doesn’t look like they spent a lot of time on this tool, but it should do its job and help get answers to error codes and fix the basic Windows problems users encounter.