February 27, 2014
We've had a handful of our 25 Windows XP (SP3) computers nagging us about installing KB2862330 every day since it was released by Microsoft on Patch Tuesday, October 2013.
For us, the problem involved three of six systems of a Dell model and one of three systems of an HP model. Even where the system was used for the same task, not all of a particular model were affected.
I had previously searched for solutions and some said that by disabling certain USB components temporarily you could successfully install the update. Others said that rebooting a second time immediately after installing the update made it stick. I tried those methods without success and ignored the problem for months.
Given that the problem affected only some of a model being used for the same task, I reasoned that the hardware being the same should cause all of a model to have the problem if hardware was the cause.
Today, I finally took some time to see if anyone had found a simple way to solve the problem (I mean really solve it, not just disable KB2862330 in Windows Update).
I read through the solutions again today and ran across one posted by Vladimir Stepic that included fewer steps than some solutions, but more steps than I hoped to need. The step that caught my eye involved renaming a folder and letting Windows rebuild the folder and contents.
In an effort to see how little it would take to solve the problem, I renamed the %systemroot%\System32\Catroot2 folder, restarted the system, installed update KB2862330, restarted the computer and ran Windows Update to confirm that the update was no longer being called for.
Could I have gotten away with fewer steps? I don't know because I didn't try. I decided that the solution seemed workable, tried it on the other affected systems and very quickly had solved the problem on the four affected systems.
To rename the folder I simply started Windows Explorer, navigated to \Windows\System32, right-clicked the CatRoot2 folder, selected Rename from the pop up menu, pressed the End key on my keyboard, added .old to the folder name and pressed Enter on my keyboard to save the name.
Your milage may vary, of course, but perhaps this simple process will help more folks get rid of the update loop for KB2862330.
Bill