Ms office failed patches

Usage and Config Patch
1

I’m seeing a lot of ms office patches failing. I’m still troubleshooting but it appears that some of these systems don’t even have any office components installed. I believe there are some left over ms office keys in the registry. Has anyone else run into something similar. Or is this environment i’m working with “special” :slight_smile:

Thanks!

2

Really depends on the failure.

Uninstalling Office through normal means should clear out traces of Office in the registry, particularly the keys that BigFix patch content checks against. Third party tools or in-house scripts used to “force” an uninstall, perhaps maybe because normal means of removing Office were not working, could leave behind keys, but this means the system was in a bad state to begin with.

Common exit codes with failed Office patches are 17025, 17028, and 17029.

Generally, 17029 errors are due to problems with the Office installation and can also affect detection by Microsoft’s native detection tools, Microsoft Updates and the now deprecated MBSA tool. Again, if you have third party tools or in-house scripts that are doing “performance” or “cleanup” on the system, it’s possible those tools removed something they shouldn’t have.

With 17028 errors, it could kind of go both ways. If these were preceded with 17029 errors, then there could still be lingering issues from the 17029 problem, ie: left over keys. But this could also be an issue with the patch content.

With 17025 errors, I’d say this could be an issue with the patch content.

Everything mentioned above is a generalization. Really depends on your specific scenario and environment history.

3

Thanks for the detailed response bma. I’m seeing 17029 errors. Do you have any experience with these? Do you have a recommend approach to dealing with these

Thanks again

4

Error 17029 is a generic “Patch Failed to install” error. These aren’t easy to troubleshoot without having access to the endpoint affected. 3 steps for troubleshooting I would advise would be

  1. Try running the patch interactively on the endpoint and see if any on screen message are displayed that may give a bit more detail about the issue
  2. Look at the event logs for any entries the patch attempt may have recorded
  3. Locate the patch install log, usually in “%WINDIR%\Temp” called “opatchinstall(x).log” (where x is an number that increments with each patch install) and see if the log holds any useful info.
5

Exit code 17029 can be due to a variety of reasons.

As SLB mentioned, running the patch interactively on one of those affected endpoints could provide a more detailed error message.

One common 17029 message is something along the lines of “Detection Error”. Most certainly deleting files in the “C:\Windows\Installer” folder would cause an Office update to throw the “Detection Error” message but there could be other reasons.

6

Thanks guys. This will be very helpful