Windows Update Error 0x80070780

These last two months a couple of the servers I maintain at work were failing to install the monthly update rollup. Usually when updates start failing, we tend to reach for a server rebuild instead of troubleshooting the black box that can be Windows Updates – after all the error messages and codes they display to end users aren’t exactly… descriptive. This particular error code doesn’t make Microsoft’s list of common errors and mitigation.

Our first occurrence of this error started with our February maintenance, performed in early March. Time got away from me and I didn’t find the time to troubleshoot or rebuild the affected servers in March… until March maintenance.

The Windows Update troubleshooter found nothing wrong.

Running the following took about an hour, and found nothing amiss (or, if it did, it was unrelated to the update error).

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DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /startcomponentcleanup
sfc /scannow

A quick search suggests 0x80070780 indicates a permissions error. Sounds simple enough, I might be able to handle this myself. A quick look at CBS.log¹ showed the error has something to do with a desktop.ini in the “Administrative Tools” folder of the Start Menu.

The actual text in the log was a bit more cryptic (formatted for readability):

2025-03-30 04:37:07, Error
CSI    00001676 (F) c0000279 [Error,Facility=(system),Code=633 (0x0279)] #3914314#
from Windows::Rtl::SystemImplementation::DirectFileSystemProvider::SysCreateFile(
    flags = (AllowFileNotFound), 
    handle = {provider=NULL, handle=0, name= ("null")}, 
    da = (FILE_GENERIC_READ|FILE_EXECUTE|0x00000040), 
    oa = @0x75b79fbb28->OBJECT_ATTRIBUTES {
        s:48; rd:NULL; 
        on:[89]'\??\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools\desktop.ini';
        a:0; sd:@0x1dd81dc34e0
    },
    iosb = @0x75b79fbb80, as = (null), fa = 0, s[gle=0xd0000279]

I’m not entirely sure what most of that means, but I am able to investigate permissions issues, so I’ll start with that. I checked the permissions of C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools\desktop.ini² and compared them to the same file from a working server. There were some discrepancies.

Without going into too much detail here, on the working server the following users or groups had some sort of permissions on desktop.ini:

• Everyone
• ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES
• ALL RESTRICTED APPLICATION PACKAGES
• SYSTEM
• Administrators
• Users

On the trouble servers, ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES and ALL RESTRICTED APPLICATION PACKAGES were missing. I tried to add them, but that didn’t result in a successful update. My next trick was to rename desktop.ini to desktop.ini.old and retry the update. Success!

I’ll be curious to see if that resolves some of the issues I’ve been having with Citrix Profile Management.