First off, I’d like to get the joke out of the way that BITS is a bit of an oxymoron sort of like Army Intelligence….ba dah ba!
OK, now that I’ve got that out of my system, I have to say that this has been one heck of a problem to solve, and that the search-ability of this topic is fairly low.
My problem arose a while back when my Windows Automatic Updater stopped updating automatically. At first it was not a big deal, I would simply use my browser to go to the Microsoft Update site on a regular basis. While this is a fine solution for me, I realize that for a large majority it is not.
I recently decided to install the Google Pack since I wanted some of the Google Software it contained and did not feel like tracking down the stand alone installers. After installing the “Google Updater” the software would tell me that the “Background Intelligent Transfer Service failed to start”. Looking in the Event Viewer I was presented with this information from the System log.
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7023
Date: 2/13/2008
Time: 7:21:39 AM
User: N/A
Computer: JOEL2
Description:
The Background Intelligent Transfer Service service terminated with the following error:
The system cannot find the file specified.
Not very informative and, unfortunately, searching for that event ID and other bits of information was not very fruitful.
I finally came across the post How To Fix Windows Update (BITS/AU) after quite a bit of searching. Reading through this fine article by Mike I quickly realized just how many things can go wrong with BITS.
I began going through the list of things to try, of course verifying first if I needed to do a particular step. In step 2 there is a registry file to down and merge to try to fix the problem. I opened the file and looked through each setting to see if I needed to do it. It turned out that there was 1 setting I was missing. Parameters key was missing completely. Here is the part of the registry file that I ended up merging which fixed my BITS problem.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\BITS\Parameters]
“ServiceDll”=hex(2):43,00,3a,00,5c,00,57,00,49,00,4e,00,44,00,4f,00,57,00,53,\
00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,71,00,6d,00,\
67,00,72,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,00,00
The ServiceDll value, converted to ASCII, is C:\WINDOWS\system32\qmgr.dll
After merging this my service started up and Google Updater worked great. Thanks for the article, Mike!
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Excellent Post. Had same problem and the Registry entry fixed the problem.
Note: When pasting the key into a text file, I had to replace the ” symbol!
Worked very well, thanks
This was a fantastic and quick help, as I was blocked badly by this problem today. Your post was my first Google hit, your advice was clear and to the point, and it got me going right away.
One variation on my system:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\BITS\Parameters already had the correct entry.
However, I looked at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BITS\Parameters and found that it was missing from there.
I added the entry as you described, and BITS started up easily after that, and MS Updates could once again resume.
Again, thanks!
Great, happy to help!
I have the same issue. Tried the advice given on Microsoft’s page, but it the BITS still doesn’t show up on the list of services. So, while I understand there is obviously something missing….I don’t quite understand how to get it back. Where do I type in the entry that you all show? Please help. Thanks.
Gerry,
I simply downloaded the registry file from the site linked to above. Once you have it, you can double click on it and your system will ask you if you want to merge it into your registry. That saves having to type it in.
Castlecops seems to be down now indefinitely. You won’t happen to have the registry file available anymore would you?
I was hit by some kind of trojan and malware that disabled my AU and BITS. I’ve now got AU working but BITS isn’t. It’s likely that the lack of a Parameters (all I see are Enum and Security) on my regedit is what’s keeping it from working.
I’m sorry, I do not. That’s too bad about CastleCops. Maybe you can try to find some contact information to get the file from them.
I’ve looked on my registry editor, and the Binary files are both in the control001 and currentcontrol, but I can’t go onto any Microsoft-related items e.g. Halo 2, Windows Update etc. My Xbox 360 can connect fine to Xbox LIVE, but this computer can’t. The error displayed when attempting to start BITS is the 193: oxc1 error. Amy help?
Harry,
I don’t know about your error specifically. If you have a firewall on your computer (especially if it is not the Microsoft one) make sure that it has allowances for BITS. If that’s not the case, you may want to make sure that you have the latest service pack for your operating system. If that is not an option and you are running XP, you can have a look at this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314862
I had this issue on a PC that was cleaned of viruses. After hours of searching for a solution I searched the registry for the word BITS and found 2 instances of a path where the word %SystemRoot% had been changed to %fystemRoot%. This prevented BITS from finding the specified file.
Thanks for the tip Rob! Would you mind sharing which registry keys those were (if you still have them written down somewhere) for others to see? Since the CasleCops site has went off-line it’s been hard to find good information about fixing the problem.
I just want to say thank you to all of you who actually take the time to post on issues you’ve had.
THANKS ROB! I also had this happen after I cleaned a Trojan of my machine. I was also getting Buffer Overflow errors that Mcafee kept prompting me saying it was blocking these. After looking further I also found where %SystemRoot% had been changed to %fystemRoot%. Thanks
I noticed that 4 registries in the BITS had @%SystemRoot%, so I removed the @ from them but it still has done nothing. I can access the live.com site, but nothing else related to microsoft eg. support, GFW-LIVE. I don’;t have any firewalls blocking BITS and Windows Defender has allowed it through, the COM Host is also not functioning as well which could be the source of the error since BITS relies on that. I’ve tried Live Messenger too, but no luck
. If the registry keys could be found I would be very grateful, I really want to earn some more achievements on Halo 2 lol 
.
I fixed my BITS couldn’t not start issue by searching the registry for BITS and changing the %fystemRoot% to %SystemRoot% and this fixed BITS. Thanks for the help.
Thank you James that worked great!!!
It’s really great. I searched through the web for tons of answers but still do not work. Sucks!!
Finally I found out your page by searching Background Intelligent Transfer Service 7023 in google and got the answers. Yeah !!!
Btw, I think that my BITS problem may due to some Trojan/virus problem (Anyone has more idea regarding this?). At the first glance, my registry’s ServiceDll value was being blocked which is not able to be changed by Administrator. I’ve to add the Admin access to the parm value before I can make the change. Also, in my case ServiceDll has been changed to a invalid dll (like Ffjjr.dll), i.e. the service cannot be started.
Rob, you just saved my ass. Sure enough the parent BITS folder of the one posted above (in CurrentControlSet) had %fystem instead of %System! Thanks!
How do I get to the registry to search for BITS? I need a step by step tutorial because I have no idea. BITS doesn’t exist in the list of services at all on my computer. Can someone help me out? I have 32 bit vista
Kadija, if you do not know how to view and edit registry settings, I strongly recommend that you find somebody who is comfortable with performing these actions. Modifying the registry can have catastrophic consequences on your system if not done properly.
I also cannot install windows update. This is so aggravating. I recently installed Office 2007 and I couldn’t update since.