Setting A Proxy Server For Windows Updates On Vista

June 25th, 2008 Adrian Banks 3475 Views

I've recently been trying to get automatic Windows updates working on Vista. Every time it tried to fetch the updates, it reported an error code of 80070057. After getting more detailed information from the WindowsUpdate.log in the Windows directory, the problem turned out to be the proxy server in our office. Whilst my user profile has the correct proxy server settings, the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) that is used to download Windows updates doesn't. The solution is to set the proxy server for the system.

To see the current proxy settings, run from the command line:

netsh winhttp show proxy

If it says "direct", there are no proxy settings and Windows update probably will not work.

To set the proxy settings, run from the command line (you will probably need to run this with administrative permissions):

netsh winhttp set proxy proxy-server="yourproxy:port"
bypass-list="<local>"

This will set the proxy server on the system to allow the BITS service to connect to the Windows updates servers.

Entry Filed Under: Proxy, Windows

1 Comment Add your own

1. Sk | October 11th, 2009 at 5:59

Very Helpful info.
But can u tell me how to set authentication for windows update?
The proxy server I use requires authentication.