While doing some other work for a customer, I noticed that windows defender hadn’t been updated for about 8 weeks (from end of Nov 2007 to end of jan 2008).

I tried a “manual” update, but it kept giving an 0x80240022 error (and the last update timestamp wouldn’t change).

Since I was running late, I asked the customer to call me back if it continues to give the error.

About mid february, he calls me back, saying it still won’t update.

when I take a look, I notice that the update timestamp is around the 5 feb… Looks like it got updated since I was last there, but not reliably enough.

I try a few simple things like disable the xp firewall, reinstall WD, but nothing works.

Looking around the net and I see many suggested solutions ie:

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-2478331.php

http://help.lockergnome.com/vista/Code-0x80240022-Windows-Defender-update-ftopict19351.html

I try them, but after I now end up with a 0x8024402f error.

Another trawl around the net led me to:

http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=693166

but none of those suggestions worked either.

So we decided to just dump defender and go with something like avg anti-malware (since customer was already using avg anti-virus, then AVGAM would have been a simple step.

And there starts another story…