How to resolve Windows 11 update install error for Windows Defender

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timmmay

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#311257 30-Dec-2023 12:46

I have a 1-2 month old Windows 11 install, on a computer that's run Windows 10 fine for a couple of years - Gigabyte B550, 32GB RAM, AMD 5600X. For the past few weeks I've had the error below in Windows update. I've tried:

Windows update troubleshooter
Everything on this Windows thread - turning off services, deleting folders, etc
Deleting the whole c:\windows\software distribution folder ( something like that)
Installing KB4052623 manually

Any suggestions how to proceed? I'm not sure if this is blocking other updates or not. The last other update I had was "2023-12 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 Version 23H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5033375)" on 12/12/2023

Update for Microsoft Defender Antivirus antimalware platform - KB4052623 (Version 4.18.23110.3) - Current Channel (Broad)

Install error - 0x80070643

freitasm

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#3176328 30-Dec-2023 13:00

How long has this been happening? If only a day or so, wait for the next update and install that instead. Or has this been happening for some time with all anti-malware updates?

timmmay

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#3176333 30-Dec-2023 13:07

It's been happening for roughly the past few weeks. It doesn't look to be a definition update, it looks to be a software update. I've done definition updates with no problems from the command line, to see if that helped.

timmmay

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#3188892 31-Jan-2024 17:34

It's still happening... other updates install, this one just won't apply. The only thing I've done that might not be 100% standard is I've disabled Windows event logging, as described here.

Any ideas how I might fix this, other than reinstalling Windows? I did that a few months ago, it's a bit of a pain to get everything reinstalled.

Jase2985

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#3188936 31-Jan-2024 19:46

Windows 10 has an update that's doing the same/similar thing as Microsoft has now specified that the update needs 250mb worth of space on the recovery partition, yet it only ever asked for 100mb when installing windows. So its broken on a lot of PC's. You can at some length increase the size of the partition but in some cases its formatted them as FAT32 and the main partition as NTFS, and changing that to NTFS is not easy.

timmmay

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#3188941 31-Jan-2024 20:19

Thanks @jase2985 . Do you have any more detail, or a link? I don't believe I have a recovery partition on my OS disk. I do have a 500MB "EFI System Partition".

Oblivian

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#3188942 31-Jan-2024 20:24

Better yet was their original gpt table had RE and system reserved at the start of the disk. And you can't resize it to suit as there's no space after.

Oh and they never throught to put in a validation check for the exisitence of a RE partition at all so fails if you had your own partition layout excluding one.

Assumed the entire world has one and its at the end of the disk and OS resizable. /Facepalm/

May have a downstream on w10->11 enablement too.

/Edit posted at same time. You do not appear to be related

The buggy one is WinRE security update. Yours is super old.

timmmay

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#3188943 31-Jan-2024 20:40

Oblivian: You do not appear to be related

The buggy one is WinRE security update. Yours is super old.

Thanks 🙂 What is old? I couldn't follow what you mean.

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Jase2985

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#3188997 31-Jan-2024 20:56

Oblivian: Better yet was their original gpt table had RE and system reserved at the start of the disk. And you can't resize it to suit as there's no space after.

Oh and they never throught to put in a validation check for the exisitence of a RE partition at all so fails if you had your own partition layout excluding one.

Assumed the entire world has one and its at the end of the disk and OS resizable. /Facepalm/

May have a downstream on w10->11 enablement too.

/Edit posted at same time. You do not appear to be related

The buggy one is WinRE security update. Yours is super old.

Yep pretty stupid aye, would be nice if they thought about this ages ago and started making the partition bigger

Timmaaay yours is the last 500mb partition on your drive, and its not related to what i or Oblivian mentioned but it seems Microsoft have dropped the ball recently with updates

timmmay

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#3188998 31-Jan-2024 21:00

Ah ok, thanks. I guess I'll spend more time on Google to try to work it out, or maybe I just ignore it.

yitz

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#3188999 31-Jan-2024 21:03

There are Boot, Page File partitions but cannot see a Recovery partition which I don't think can be located in the EFI system partition. Maybe there is none or it's on another disk. You can check WinRE (Recovery) location by running reagentc /info in elevated cmd prompt.

Installation logs (TrustedInstaller/CBS logs) may be found at C:\WINDOWS\Logs\CBS\ CBS.log and CbsPersist_*.log

Oblivian

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#3189000 31-Jan-2024 21:06

timmmay:
Oblivian: You do not appear to be related

The buggy one is WinRE security update. Yours is super old.

Thanks 🙂 What is old? I couldn't follow what you mean.

December 5th old.
I would have expected it be replaced 3 weeks ago.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/security/defender-endpoint/microsoft-defender-antivirus-updates?view=o365-worldwide

timmmay

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#3190045 3-Feb-2024 19:47

I think I may have solved the problem. I followed the instructions in this Microsoft answers question, restarted in safe mode, ran the registry file, and restarted. The update seems to have gone. Though I'm not sure Windows Defender is working... see the screenshot below. I can't turn real time protection on.

Restarting in safe mode was the most difficult part of the process. The only one of the many ways it's meant to work, worked - going into msconfig and changing boot options.

timmmay

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#3190114 3-Feb-2024 22:18

Nope, it's borked. Looks like a windows reinstall, hopefully keeping apps, but even that isn't working properly from USB. If I can't refresh windows from the ISO it'll be a fresh install of W11 😞