Unable to Update

Hi folks,

I'm working at a small business (100 emp) who received a bunch of
refurbished Dell computers, and unfortunately they don't seem to be in the
best shape. The following is a letter I wrote to customer service
(Microsoft), who in turn directed me to several resources including this one.
It explains the problem, for the most part. Hopefully, someone will be able
to help:
"The terminal originally received an error (c000021a) resulting in a blue
screen on start up and shut down. I was able to get to the explorer, but it
was extremely unstable. When I tried updating the computer on the website, I
initially received an error (0xc80003fa) that, when I searched for a
solution, told me to stop the update service, rename a folder
(SoftwareDistribution > SDold), start it up again, clear IE data, and try
again, with no success. I also started getting some weird display issues, so
I updated the driver (the adapter is an INTEL 82865G onboard graphics card).
That seems to have cleared that up, unrelated really. I tried again and
again to resolve this issue, but now I am getting additional error messages
when attempting to update (history of errors: 0xc80003fa; 0x8007043c;
0x800703e6, and then I stopped trying). The computer is hooked up to a
"server" (running sql), and there are about 70 computers tied to that server
hub. The computer itself is a shoddy Dell, I say that because about 7 other
computers (same distributor) have problems that appear to be due to a sloppy
install (old drivers, missing dlls), which would be fine if it came with
installation disks (I would just repair it or format and reinstall), but they
did not. Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated."

I've since been able to restart the computer without receiving an error, and
just for diagnostic purposes I installed Windows Defender to see if there was
any suspicious files, but nothing that alerted the program, and I am unable
to update it for the same reason as above (same error, 0xc80003fa). Sorry
for the long post, any help would be greatly appreciated, though it is no
longer an emergency, I'de like to know what to do if the problem occurs on
another terminal.

Update: The terminal is still returning a blue screen with the c000021a
error. If I restart it after that, it goes to the desktop.

"William Sean Geoghegan" wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I'm working at a small business (100 emp) who received a bunch of
> refurbished Dell computers, and unfortunately they don't seem to be in the
> best shape. The following is a letter I wrote to customer service
> (Microsoft), who in turn directed me to several resources including this one.
> It explains the problem, for the most part. Hopefully, someone will be able
> to help:
> "The terminal originally received an error (c000021a) resulting in a blue
> screen on start up and shut down. I was able to get to the explorer, but it
> was extremely unstable. When I tried updating the computer on the website, I
> initially received an error (0xc80003fa) that, when I searched for a
> solution, told me to stop the update service, rename a folder
> (SoftwareDistribution > SDold), start it up again, clear IE data, and try
> again, with no success. I also started getting some weird display issues, so
> I updated the driver (the adapter is an INTEL 82865G onboard graphics card).
> That seems to have cleared that up, unrelated really. I tried again and
> again to resolve this issue, but now I am getting additional error messages
> when attempting to update (history of errors: 0xc80003fa; 0x8007043c;
> 0x800703e6, and then I stopped trying). The computer is hooked up to a
> "server" (running sql), and there are about 70 computers tied to that server
> hub. The computer itself is a shoddy Dell, I say that because about 7 other
> computers (same distributor) have problems that appear to be due to a sloppy
> install (old drivers, missing dlls), which would be fine if it came with
> installation disks (I would just repair it or format and reinstall), but they
> did not. Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated."
>
> I've since been able to restart the computer without receiving an error, and
> just for diagnostic purposes I installed Windows Defender to see if there was
> any suspicious files, but nothing that alerted the program, and I am unable
> to update it for the same reason as above (same error, 0xc80003fa). Sorry
> for the long post, any help would be greatly appreciated, though it is no
> longer an emergency, I'de like to know what to do if the problem occurs on
> another terminal.