This article was originally published in issue 53 of The Crypt Mag

I recently switched my internet security software to Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 on my Windows Vista machine. At first I was pretty happy with it, but then I noticed that I had not had any notifications of Windows updates for a while. Performing a manual update check ended up with the following error being displayed:

Clicking on the ‘Get help’ link revealed that the 80072F8F error code is a problem with the time and date of my computer being incorrect. I checked both the time and date which were correct and even went to the extent of doing the suggested remedy of a manual synchronisation with an internet time server. Alas the Windows update still failed with the same error code.

I decided then to temporarily turn off the Kaspersky Internet Security protection and see what would happen. The Windows update now worked, so the problem obviously lay with the internet security software.

After some trial and error I eventually managed to figure out what was causing the problem. Windows Vista appears to use port 443 to carry out the update, so all I had to do was disable the monitoring for this port in the Kaspersky Internet Security.

To turn off the monitoring on port 443 first open the Kaspersky Internet Security and then click the ‘Settings’ button (highlighted):

Now click on ‘Traffic monitoring’ from the left-hand list:

Click on the ‘Port settings…’ button:

Now look for the entry for port 443 and make sure that it is unticked:

Finally just keep clicking the ‘OK’ buttons until you get back to the main Kaspersky Internet Security window and close it.

All going well the Windows Vista update service should now work fine.

Article copyright © 2007, 2010 Francis G. Loch