Code 80070241 in Windows update and "Windows cannot verify the digital signature of this file" when trying to run any program.

Question

Windows update appeared today when we started one of our machines, informing us that there were a few updates to install. After reviewing the updates, we clicked the "install now" button, and it immediately failed with the error code above.

I tried to run regedit for an unrelated reason, and it came up with an error dialog with "Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file. A recent hardware or software change might have installed a file that is signed incorrectly or damaged or that might be malicious software from an unknown source."

After some research here and elsewhere on google, and not finding anything appropriate, we put in the Win7 disk, started the recovery tools and tried to roll back to a previous system restore point (3 days old).

The restore went ok, rebooted, but the problem persists.

Next we've just tried to install some anti-malware software, but on trying to run the installer we get another error message stating "ShellExecuteEx failed; Code 577" and then the same message about verifying the digital signature.

The computer was running fine all of yesterday, and has been running fine since just after the new year when it was upgraded to Windows 7. No hardware changes have been made, and no software changes were made by users over the last week.

The computer is an AMD Athlon II X4 with 4Gb of RAM on an Asus M4A78-EM motherboard, running from a 64Gb SSD, with a 250Gb SATA drive for data/programs. GPU is an Nvidia 260, and it has a CD and DVD drive as well. It's connected to our router via the motherboards gigabit ethernet interface.

It was running windows 32 bit XP SP3 until just after the new year. When we fitted the new SSD to replace an older hard drive we did a clean install of XP (slipstreamed with SP3), and then used the upgrade version of 32 bit W7 Home premium DVD to upgrade the system. Since then the system has run flawlessley.

On the machine is MS office XP, Firefox 3.6.3, AVG 8.5 and a few games such as Turbine's DDO.

The main user account used for trying to resolve these problems, and for running Windows Update and trying to install programs is a member of the administrators group.

Firefox runs fine, as does office, and it plays the installed games just fine too. AVG reports being up to date, with no problems and has detected no threats.

However, trying to view the registry with regedit, or start compmgmt.msc or event viewer all bring up the "cannot verify digital signature" message.

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Can anyone offer an advice on what might be wrong with this installation please, and how we might go about resolving it?

Answer 1

Unable to run chkdsk/scandisk as it bought up the message "cannot verify the digital signature" etc etc etc.

This morning, the machine started misbehaving in new ways - stopped playing back sound, refused to start device manager, open control panel properly etc.

So, I reset the BIOS to boot from CD, slapped XP SP3 in and reinstalled, then upgraded to Win 7 again.

Still have no idea what caused the problem, but it appears to be gone now - reinstalled all the same apps, AV / anti-malware programs, games etc and everything seems to be fine now.

*shrug*

Computers.

Answer 2

neralet, 

that error usually indicates an error in reading data, either that the disc is scratched or because thereading fails.

check disk for errors

Start>Computer>Right Click "C" drive>Click Properties>Tools>Error Checking-Click "Check Now">Under Check Disk Options click "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors"> Restart Computer

how to Use Check Disk (chkdsk) in Windows 7 http://www.w7forums.com/use-chkdsk-check-disk-t448.html

please let us know what fixes the problem or if the problem remains.

Answer 3

sfc /scannow even :-)

Answer 4

Try rebooting into Safe mode, uninstalling your AV.

If you've any utilties that interfere with UAC uninstall those as well.

Probably also worth opening a command prompt with elevated rights (run as admin) and then run sfs /scannow