Dave-H

No it isn't that. As you say it's almost certainly just the processing that the proxy has to do which is casing a bottleneck. As reading a lot of my e-mails would be a very painful process without the proxy, I'll live with it!

No it doesn't matter, I was just wondering why the loss of speed was so great with a locally running proxy.

I started using a proxy because my ancient Eudora e-mail program uses the IE engine to display messages, and I started getting certificate errors popping up all the time. That's the only reason I have to use the proxy (and now for Microsoft Update on IE8 again of course!) so it's not really a problem. I was just a bit puzzled. I would expect some loss of speed, but not a third of what it should be!

Yes, I think I probably always imported the certificate by double clicking on it and using the wizard, which supposedly puts the certificate in the right store automatically! This time it obviously didn't put it where it needed to be. Just a couple of quick off-topic questions about HTTPSProxy. Do you know why there are two entries for HTTPSProxy.exe in Task Manager? Different PIDs and different memory usage. Also, would you expect using HTTPSProxy to significantly slow down your internet connection speed? This probably happened with ProxHTTPSProxyMII as well, but I never noticed it! Using 360Chrome, where you can easily switch the proxy off and on, on the Cloudflare speed test I'm getting 66Mbps with a direct connection, but only 21Mbps with the proxy enabled, an enormous difference! I know of course that online proxy servers are always very slow, when they work at all, but I'm surprised that a local proxy should cause such a speed hit. Is that expected?

Yes I did look at that tool thanks, I transferred the help file from the older version into the zip file of the newer version, and I will keep that. I hope now that I will never have to use it of course! I've reinstalled Chrome Frame, and restored my original SoftwareDistribution folder as a test, and I now have my original twelve years of update history back! Microsoft Update is still working fine, so they weren't a factor in it not working before. I'm still so pleased that this was fixed. All it took, and I thought that would be the case, was for you to see the apparent clock problem yourself on your system. Once you had it to directly work with, you fixed it, thank you again!

Yes indeed, so simple once you know! The automatic selection for the certificate import was obviously getting it wrong, at least for some of us! I still wonder why it worked for some and not others. You can do it through the Internet Options Control Panel applet if you select "show physical stores" BTW. Finally, all's well that ends well, and thank you so much everyone, especially of course @AstroSkipper, for sticking with this for so long. Cheers, Dave.

I see you're using ProxHTTPSProxyMII too, as I was originally. I'm now using HTTPSProxy, but the result is the same. This seems to prove to me that it doesn't matter which of those programs you use, the error can still happen. Assuming that all other settings and configurations are correct, I think the proxy server is very likely the cause of the certificate error, but we need to diagnose why it works for some people and not others, with apparently the same setup. For anyone who hasn't already noticed, the PM system is fixed BTW!

Already done, but I don't know how long it will take to address. The PMs were already faulty before the whole board went down on Tuesday. I've reported to @xperthe board owner that PMs are still down.

Thanks. I'm away from home at the moment, back on Thursday, so I will give it a try then.

Ah yes, sorry more confusion from earlier on!

That link won't work for me either. It Looks like KB968730 was replaced by KB3072630, which I also have installed already. My version of crypt32.dll is 5.131.2600.6459, the same as yours.

That link doesn't work as it stands. I guess you have to be a member? I downloaded KB968730 from elsewhere anyway, it is the SHA-2 update I think? Thanks, but again I already have it installed.

Thanks, but that appears to be an update for the Windows MSI Installer. I'm not sure what that would have to do with Windows Update. I already have it installed anyway.

Ah thanks, I didn't spot the reference to it in that post! I did download it then, which is why I recognised the file's icon, but I can't remember whether I ever actually used it. Certainly everything that it does was checked and implemented manually anyway.

Yes thanks, I found that. Unfortunately, everything he did to fix it, I've already tried, in some cases several times, and it didn't fix it!

I've just been reviewing the earlier posts, and I was wrong when I said that nobody else had reported my problem. @xpandvistafanreported exactly the same problem here. I don't know if they found a fix, but I'll search some more!

I'm sure I had it before, I recognise the icon, so I assumed I had used it! You've made me doubt now.

OK I'll give that another go. Thanks for the link to winUpRestore!v28 BTW. Is that the same version I used before, or a later one? I can't remember! I'm pretty happy now that there is nothing wrong with my Windows Update software installation, I don't think it would get as far as it does if there was. It falls at the very last hurdle as far as I can see. If "an update certificate" means the certificate of a specific update, that would imply that an available update has been detected, which I feel is actually pretty unlikely now. It's more likely to mean a server certificate I would have thought.

It's here.

OK, scratch that theory then! I'm wondering about the error message saying "an update certificate". Does that mean the certificate of a particular update, or a general server certificate? I know my computer clock is 100% correct, I know my root certificates are 100% up to date. The pages I've found about the 0x80072F8F error sometimes cite a "defective proxy server" as being the culprit, but we are both now using the same local proxy server with exactly the same settings. I wish it was possible to access Microsoft Update now on XP without a proxy server, but it isn't of course. I've tried online proxy servers replacing HTTPSProxy, but then the site doesn't work at all, presumably because of the lack of the TLS 1.2 support that HTTPSProxy provides.

Yes, it was very disappointing! I'm really not going to go through everything again or do a new installation just to try and fix this. It's a huge bonus just to have the Microsoft Update site display at all again, and allow me to see my update history in it. There will of course be no more updates for XP anyway, or any of the other XP-compatible Microsoft software I have installed, like Office 2010, so there really is no point anyway in having Microsoft Update working fully again. The only reason to need it would be for updating a new installation, and I'm never going to do that unless there's an absolute disaster with my present installation. The thought of installing it all again from scratch, including the POSReady updates, fills me with absolute horror! I do ISO backups every week of my Windows 10 installation using the built-in Microsoft backup utility, but for Windows XP (and Windows 98) I just do a file copy backup of the drives. Maybe I should get the necessary software to do ISO backups of them too. I certainly don't have a backup from when Microsoft Update last worked! Why it doesn't work for me is still a mystery of course, and I would love to know what the problem is, but I think we've done as much as we can now. Whatever the problem is, it doesn't seem to affect anything else! I actually suspect that the problem is not what we think it is, Microsoft error messages are notorious for not really identifying the real problem! It must be related to certificate validity I'm sure, something in the certificate chain is failing and causing the scans to fail, but it is getting at least to that point. Do you have the POSReady updates installed? There is an outside chance that one of them is causing the problem. It would be good to know if anyone with them installed has Microsoft Update working properly now. Cheers, Dave.

I didn't try that then, but I've now toggled it on and off a few times and now left it on. I also tried removing all the Microsoft certificates, which stopped it working completely, not surprisingly (error 0x800B0109)! I then ran heinoganda's root certificates updater, which put some (not all) of the deleted certificates back, proving it works I suppose, which returned it to as it was before. I've also restored my original datastore.edb file, which has returned my update history I'm glad to say.

OK, I've tried the last solution, still no change I'm afraid. I did have to re-enable Microsoft Update, as you would expect. I got this screen, which i have seen before. As before, the "Check for Updates" button did nothing, but reloading the page produce the normal result. I've attached the log again. I don't know where to go from here, it is a complete mystery as to why this isn't working. As far as I'm aware nobody else has reported this problem. I've been looking to see if there is some utility which will track the certificate chain, which is presumably failing at some point, but no luck as yet. Can I say now how grateful I am for everyone's input and help with this, especially AstroSkipper of course! WindowsUpdate.log

Not yet, I'll try it tomorrow.

I checked with the HxD Hexeditor, which has a file compare function. The file in system32 and the file in the Restore_WU_XP folder\x86 folder are identical. I've just tried loading MS Update in ArcticFoxie's version of 360Chrome 13.5, which has an Internet Explorer engine function. It produced the same result, but did allow me to look at the certificate, which it said was fine.