Fystemroot – Fix BITS for Windows Update after Virus Removal on Windows XP

Biggest pain in the @$$ issue I have seen so far on Windows XP. You remove tons of viruses, get everything working, and then all the sudden Windows Update doesn’t work anymore, gives a dumb error. [Error number: 0x8024D007]

The first issue is that windows wont update. The second is that you start getting locked out of all kinds of things due to system administrative policy issues.

So I decide to download Microsoft’s Fix it tool for Windows Update Issues to have it fix it for me. NO SUPRISE IT DIDN’T WORK, well sort of. It couldn’t initialize BITS, and when I tried to, it said I hadn’t the rights to do so.

I wasn’t sure what to do, I couldn’t figure it out. After 3 hours on a 1 hour job, In tears and defeated I told my customer I was going to have to backup and reformat.  He agreed and I proceeded to do a system recovery…until I realized he had no restore partition, and probably no installation discs. Ever vigilant, I began my search again. Trolling forums and Googling like crazy I came across this Comment #10.

I had this issue on a PC that was cleaned of viruses. After hours of searching for a solution I searched the registry for the word BITS and found 2 instances of a path where the word%SystemRoot% had been changed to %fystemRoot%. This prevented BITS from finding the specified file.

I searched, and found it…there it was! Beckoning for me to fix it!

Now, all is not that easy. For some reason I was getting an error message saying you do not have authority or permission to change these files from fystemroot to systemroot, so the search continued.

This following information is an example why we read comments, and not just articles 😉

Go into the registy and go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services (BITS and Wuauserv)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Services (BITS and Wuauserv)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Services (BITS and Wuauserv)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services (BITS and Wuauserv)

Find BITS and Wuauserv and right click it on the left hand side, and select “Permissions”. Tick full control again for allow (For each one of them).

This will allow you to Set Permissions and rename those nasty registry keys.

I then ran the Microsoft Fix it Tool , and immediately it cleared the BITS initialization portion. Thank Goodness….load up Windows Update.

Voilà, [Error number: 0x8024D007], Gone! Windows is now updating.

Fystemroot, I happily and triumphantly give you the /fist…multiple times /fist /fist /fist.