Relevance for Monthly Microsoft Patches

[bma]

Be wary of 17029 errors. They can affect the reports by Microsoft Updates and MBSA.

I’ve posted some info about it here:

Ms office failed patches

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, …

An easy way to demonstrate this is install an Office product (Office suite, Sharepoint Designer, etc) on a test system.
Do an MS update scan, which would report back a ton of Office updates needed since this is new installation which hasn’t yet been patched. Then delete .msi files and .msp files in the C:\Windows\Installer folder. At this point, you can try installing one of the updates reported in the scan and you would get an 17029 exit code. Now run the MS update scan again and you would see that it now reports zero Office updates needed.