There seems to be a trend at work to use Microsoft Live Writer to create posts at the moment, so I though I would be a good little sheep and install it myself to have a look. So off I went to the page to go and download Live Writer for myself.
There I ran in to a problem, I could not seem to get the installer to work. You don't simply download and then install, you effectively install through Windows Update.
The install application sat there for a few minutes attempting to see what 'Live' applications I already had installed on my machine. Then it told me that it had failed and that was the end of it, although I could try later if I wanted too.
Naturally, I wanted to know why it did not install. My initial though was, it must be our firewall. But other people in the office had installed it OK, so that could not be the case.
The next logical thing to do was to check the event log, which delivered some delightful insight in to the problem:
The description for Event ID ( 5000 ) in Source ( WindowsLiveSetup ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: wlsetupdiagnostic, windows live sign-in assistant, 4.200.520.1, onsetupjobsourceresolutionend_ 0x80072efd, 12.0.1471.1025, NIL, NIL, NIL, NIL, NIL, NIL.
As usual with a lot of error messages, the only real course of action was to pick the error code 0X80072EFD and google it. The most useful article I found seemt o be this one:
You may receive an "Error 0x80072EE2," "Error 0x80072EE7," "Error 0x80072EFD," "Error 0x80072F76," or "Error 0x80072F78" error message when you try to use the Windows Update Web site or the Microsoft Update Web site
"Super", I think to myself and merrily go about my way checking all of the things it tells me to check. Problem is, once I've checked everything, it still will not install.
My next course of action was to look at the Windows Update service itself. Perhaps something is wrong with that? Looking in %WINDIR% will reveal a file called WindowsUpdate.log. In here we can see all of the information about the update service and what it thinks it is doing. Now nine was full of things like:
Bypass List used : <(null)> Auth Schemes used : <>
2008-01-12 09:23:24:046 1564 360 Misc WARNING: WinHttp: SendRequestUsingProxy failed for <http://beta.update.microsoft.com/wsus30b2/microsoftupdate/redir/wsus30b2muredir.cab>. error 0x80072efd
2008-01-12 09:23:24:046 1564 360 Misc WARNING: WinHttp: SendRequestToServerForFileInformation MakeRequest failed. error 0x80072efd
2008-01-12 09:23:24:046 1564 360 Misc WARNING: WinHttp: SendRequestToServerForFileInformation failed with 0x80072efd
2008-01-12 09:23:24:046 1564 360 Misc WARNING: WinHttp: ShouldFileBeDownloaded failed with 0x80072efd
2008-01-12 09:23:57:234 1564 360 Misc WARNING: Send failed with hr = 80072efd.
2008-01-12 09:23:57:234 1564 360 Misc WARNING: SendRequest failed with hr = 80072efd. Proxy List used: <(null)> 2008-01-12 09:24:18:250 1564 360 PT WARNING: PTError: 0x80072efd
2008-01-12 09:24:18:250 1564 360 PT WARNING: PTError: 0x80072efd
2008-01-12 09:24:18:250 1564 360 PT WARNING: Initialization failed for Protocol Talker Context: 0x80072efd
2008-01-12 09:24:18:250 1564 360 Agent * WARNING: Failed to synchronize, error = 0x80072EFD
2008-01-12 09:24:18:328 1564 360 Agent * WARNING: Exit code = 0x80072EFD
2008-01-12 09:24:18:328 1564 360 Agent *********
2008-01-12 09:24:18:328 1564 360 Agent ** END ** Agent: Finding updates [CallerId = WLSetupSvc]
2008-01-12 09:24:18:328 1564 360 Agent *************
2008-01-12 09:24:18:328 1564 360 Agent WARNING: WU client failed Searching for update with error 0x80072efd
Fun, eh? No.
I could not see why I could not get these CAB files. The thing I didn't like was that it said 'http://beta.update.microsoft.com'. Somehow that sounded quite dirty to me and made me think that perhaps my version of Windows Update was a little screwed up. As that was potentially a problem, I though I would go to the windows update site.
Going to the windows update site highlighted my problem; my windows update was hideously out of date and needed to be updated. The reason for that was that I did not have automatic updates turned on, and so no updates had been applied since I had installed Windows. This problem was made even worse when my Internet security settings were to high, so they had to be turned down to Medium-Low in order to install Windows Update. Once that was all done (some forty or so patches later), Live Writer installed and I can now use it.
The moral of the story is to make sure you keep Windows up to date. The error reporting could perhaps have been a little clearer, but essentially it was my fault for not keeping my OS up to date. If anyone else has this problem, I hope this article helps.
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