I had a problem trying to run Windows Updates on a machine, getting an error “Windows Update has encountered an error and cannot display the requested page. You may find the following resources helpful in resolving the problem…’Error Number: 0x80096001”
Several kb articles (ie kb822798) mentioned the need to edit security settings and reregister dll’s and/or remove the %windir%softwaredistribution directory but unfortunately this didn’t work.
Part of the troubleshooting for this involves going in and looking at the certificate status within internet explorer. When I tried to double click on the certificate it gave me the error message “system-level error occured while verifying trust” on any of the certificates.
A post on the microsoft.public.windowsupdate newsgroup gave me a clue and by logging on as another administrator it all worked – my certificates are ok and windows updates runs through successfully.
Update It turns out that the problem in this case was partially caused by having a readonly profile – for some reason the desktop folders etc were all redirected to a share that didn’t exist. By searching for this entry in the registry and editing it to point to a share that did exist I was able to get the profile (and windows update) working again.
