Re-installing the BITS service on Windows XP SP2 when it has been corrupted

by Aurelien Botman
originally written August 2005
updated May 2006
Published on www.botmanfamily.net/~aurelien/articles.

Abstract

This document describes how to re-install the Win XP SP2 BITS (background intelligent transfer service) service if it gets corrupted. The symptoms are: Microsoft Update suddenly stopping working, and manually starting the BITS service either gives a code 2 or a code -2147024894 error.

Introduction
Method
Feedback
References

Introduction

It is the result of a very friendly, polite and helpful email exchange between a Microsoft Support employee called "Danny" and myself.

Other links you might consider are [1], [2], [3] , [4], [7] and [8].

Method

This article only applies to WinXP SP2. If you have not already got SP2, but you do have Win XP, consider upgrading. There are numerous issues concerning BITS on Windows 2000 and lower; see [3,4] for further details.
Run the following command:
```
%windir%\System32\rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %windir%\inf\qmgr.inf
```
If you are prompted to insert your operating system CD, type the following path in the Copy files from box, and then click OK:
```
%windir%\ServicePackFiles\i386
```
Restart your computer, and try to manually start the BITS service. If it still fails, try step 3.

Run the following command:

Reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BITS\Parameters /v ServiceDll /t REG_EXPAND_SZ /d %windir%\System32\qmgr.dll

Restart your computer, and try to manually start the BITS service. If it still fails, try step 4.

Run the following command:
```
Reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup
```
Restart your computer, and try to manually start the BITS service. If it still fails, try step 5.

Run the following commands [6]:

regsvr32 oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 jscript.dll
regsvr32 vbscript.dll
regsvr32 msxml.dll
regsvr32 softpub.dll
regsvr32 wintrust.dll
regsvr32 initpki.dll
regsvr32 cryptdlg.dll

Restart your computer, and try to manually start the BITS service. If it still fails, try step 6.

Delete the following directory [6]:
```
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\downloader
```
Restart your computer, and try to manually start the BITS service. If it still fails, try step 7.
Place a valid original Windows XP CD in the CDROM drive and run the following command [6] (taken from [10]):
```
sfc /scannow
```
The command may take a long time, up to an hour, to complete, as it checks the integrity of each system file [11]. Restart your computer, and try to manually start the BITS service. If it still fails, this article cannot help you further, and you should contact MS Support to resolve the issue [3,4]. Other links you might like to investigate are [7,8].

Remember to set the service starting default to "automatic" rather than "manual" once the issue is resolved.

Feedback

I have received many emails which confirm that most of the time, the fourth step above fixes the problem, as was the case on my own computer. People have been suggesting that the reboots between each step are unnecessary - I would still recommend leaving them in and checking at each point if the problem has been fixed. One person also reported that on 3 out of 4 PCs, it was necessary to turn safe mode on for step 2 to work, and another reported that step 2 failed to run completely.

Another person reported that the solution presented here also fixes the case when BITS fails with error code 123 on an "HP machine". Someone else added that to solve the error 126, "Specified module not found", the application of step 5 was required. Yet another person recommended to try to perform a "windows repair" from the original WinXP install disk with SP2, if that happened to be lying around, which worked for them.

One person emailed me to suggest that the Symantec "symnrt" removal tool (which seems to be a common culprit in causing BITS to fail in this way) may also cause another problem with the Windows Scripting Engine. They suggest a re-installation of this Windows component from [9], however I should emphasise that I have not tried this myself.

For someone with a Sony NVR23 laptop (Athlon XP 1800), the problem was only solved by step 6.

Finally, almost everybody confirmed that the Symantec "symnrt" removal tool is the root cause of this particular service corruption.

Please do continue sending in feedback (address at [5]) - it is most appreciated, and all helpful comments will be added to this feedback section. Please do remember though that I obtained the solution from MS Support, who were most helpful, so the credit should be entirely theirs.

References

[0] This can be achieved by clicking Start->Run, then typing services.msc, then locating the BITS service, right-clicking to obtain properties, and finally clicking on "start".

[1] http://castlecops.com/
t106642-How_To_Fix_Windows_Update_BITS_Newly_Edited.html

[2] http://www.faqshop.com/forums/
viewtopic.php?t=706&sid=f7f4e0d2c8ad2b1d5c99c907710a9ef4

[3] http://support.microsoft.com/
search/default.aspx?catalog=LCID%3D1033&query=background intelligent&x=0&y=0

[4] http://support.microsoft.com/
default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;883614

[5] http://www.botmanfamily.net/~aurelien/email.shtml

[6] The commands in steps 5, 6 and 7 were not tested by the author; they are the result of user feedback.

[7] http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/
en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windows.backgroundtransfer
&tid=e4c6a3b9-a051-46e0-b67e-f4a6a895da68&cat=en_US_d02fc761-3f6b-402c-82f6-ba1a8875c1a7
&lang=en&cr=&sloc=en-us&m=1&p=1

[8] http://www.thetechguide.com/forum/
lofiversion/index.php/t19919.html

[9] http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/
default.asp?url=/downloads/list/webdev.asp

[10] http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/index.php?s=9c1814ec7a21c5cbb5a5b98bc715678d
&showtopic=78867&pid=447552&st=0&#entry447552

[11] It is unclear to me whether this will revert your computer back from SP2 to SP1 if the original CD was the SP1 version.

Here finishes the article.