0x80070422

What it means

The update agent cannot work because its service is disabled or stopped. In a managed fleet this is usually deliberate configuration that was never reversed, not a fault.

Real causes

• The Windows Update service start type was set to Disabled, often by a hardening baseline or an imaging step.
• A third-party patching tool disabled the service and left it that way.
• The service is set to Manual and nothing has triggered it.

What to do

1. Check the state: Get-Service wuauserv | Select-Object Name, Status, StartType
2. Set it back to Manual and start it: Set-Service wuauserv -StartupType Manual; Start-Service wuauserv
3. Check whether policy is re-disabling it, or you will fix the same device twice.
4. In a fleet, query this across all devices rather than one at a time. A disabled update service is a compliance gap, not a single-machine problem.

Where to look

• System event log, Service Control Manager

Checked against Microsoft documentation. Last reviewed 2026-08-20.

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