Error Updating Windows Defender

Overview

If your computer spits out error code "0x80244022" while trying to update Windows Defender, try deleting your temporary internet files to resolve it. This, of course, only applies to Windows Vista.

How to Delete Temporary Internet Files

How to Find Out What Is Causing the Problem

Click Start and enter "%WinDir%\WindowsUpdate.log" into the Search bar. Open the located file (there should only be 1 found). Skip to the bottom and scan the text backwards until you find a cluster of "WARNING:" messages occuring about the same time the update was last attempted. The first of these will likely indicate what caused the problem.

If you get lost trying to find the cluster of "WARNING:" messages, just attempt to update Windows Defender again. The messages should then be on the last one or two pages.

Details

Deleting the temporary internet files effectively resolved my problem by removing an expired cookie. For some reason (probably poor coding), part of the Windows Update process could not or would not deal with the expired cookie. Security precaution, maybe? Why would an update use a cookie, anyway?

No thanks go to Microsoft, who wanted to charge me $59 for this simple solution.

Here is the relevant information shown by my log, starting with the first warning message:

2008-07-01 10:30:59:239 1116 308 PT WARNING: Cached cookie has expired or new PID is available
2008-07-01 10:30:59:239 1116 308 PT WARNING: PTWarn: Anonymous plug-in skipped for WU
2008-07-01 10:30:59:972 1116 308 PT WARNING: GetCookie failure, error = 0x80244022, soap client error = 10, soap error code = 0, HTTP status code = 503
2008-07-01 10:30:59:972 1116 308 PT WARNING: PTError: 0x80244022
2008-07-01 10:30:59:972 1116 308 PT WARNING: GetCookie_WithRecovery failed : 0x80244022
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 1116 308 PT WARNING: RefreshCookie failed: 0x80244022
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 1116 308 PT WARNING: RefreshPTState failed: 0x80244022
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 1116 308 PT WARNING: Sync of Updates: 0x80244022
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 1116 308 PT WARNING: SyncServerUpdatesInternal failed: 0x80244022
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 1116 308 Agent * WARNING: Failed to synchronize, error = 0x80244022
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 1116 308 Agent * WARNING: Exit code = 0x80244022
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 1116 308 Agent *********
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 1116 308 Agent ** END ** Agent: Finding updates [CallerId = Windows Defender]
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 1116 308 Agent *************
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 1116 308 Agent WARNING: WU client failed Searching for update with error 0x80244022
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 3204 534 COMAPI >>-- RESUMED -- COMAPI: Search [ClientId = Windows Defender]
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 3204 534 COMAPI - Updates found = 0
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 3204 534 COMAPI - WARNING: Exit code = 0x00000000, Result code = 0x80244022
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 3204 534 COMAPI ---------
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 3204 534 COMAPI -- END -- COMAPI: Search [ClientId = Windows Defender]
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 3204 534 COMAPI -------------
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 3204 8d4 COMAPI WARNING: Operation failed due to earlier error, hr=80244022
2008-07-01 10:30:59:987 3204 8d4 COMAPI FATAL: Unable to complete asynchronous search. (hr=80244022)
2008-07-01 10:31:05:011 1116 308 Report REPORT EVENT: {536AAD76-B144-48AE-AC12-E7809A3A2296} 2008-07-01 10:30:59:987-0400
1   148   101   {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}   0   80244022
Windows Defender   Failure   Software Synchronization
Windows Update Client failed to detect with error 0x80244022.