0x80072F8F MS Download Error + Clock Permanently Wrong

[Charitzo]

So my Windows clock is just permanently wrong. Every time I reboot it desyncs; for a while I've been using NetTime to fix it, however I think this is now causing all sorts issues with syncing to Windows servers, meaning I can't download anything from the MS Store, or install any other MS stuff like .Net Framework. (This may not be the cause, oddly I can't connect to any MS services properly across multiple devices?).

For the clock I've tried:
- A complete system reinstall (with total formatting of hard drives), twice.
- Multiple internet time servers.
- Setting Windows Time service to automatic.
- w32 cmd prompt commands.
- Changing the CMOS battery.

Honestly, the only thing I haven't tried but I've been tempted to do is a BIOS flash (would move from v1402 29/01/14 to v1603 24/09/12 on a Maximus VI Formula).

If anyone could shed any light as to why my clock is wrong, why MS seems to hate me across multiple devices, and if the two are related, that would honestly be amazing. For the store and .Net Framework, I get error 0x80072F8F. I tried talking to MS over live chat, but guess what, couldn't connect to that either, haha.

For the store issue I've tried:
- Resetting the store.
- Troubleshooting the store.
- Reinstalling the store in powershell.

Edit: Typo/Grammar

Eventual solution, for those who may also have these issues:
- 0x80072F8F is supposedly a current bug that Microsoft are aware of and are working on. For now, their official response/workaround is a DNS flush.
- If your system clock is permanently wrong, and you also run one of the older ASUS boards (in this case, mine was an ASUS Maximus VI Formula), and you've tried various other time troubleshoots, try a BIOS flash.

Credit to Colif for spending some extra time helping me out

 

[Colif]

have you turned of sync settings in settings/accounts/sync your settings as this might be where its getting wrong time from. If you use same user on multiple devices it could be that its got a record of your online activity with a different time zone, saved on its servers, and loads it at login.

You get the other error code if system time and date are wrong.

Error 0x80072F8F is caused for the following 3 services on Windows 10:

Windows Update.
Windows Activation.
Microsoft Store.
You might see this error if the date and time for the PC are incorrect

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/fix-0x80072f8f-error

So yes, they are related... so need to figure out why your time is always wrong. Is your region/timezone right? are you using right language? Is the date right in your bios?

 

[Charitzo]

have you turned of sync settings in settings/accounts/sync your settings as this might be where its getting wrong time from. If you use same user on multiple devices it could be that its got a record of your online activity with a different time zone, saved on its servers, and loads it at login.

You get the other error code if system time and date are wrong.

Error 0x80072F8F is caused for the following 3 services on Windows 10:

Windows Update.
Windows Activation.
Microsoft Store.
You might see this error if the date and time for the PC are incorrect

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/fix-0x80072f8f-error

So yes, they are related... so need to figure out why your time is always wrong. Is your region/timezone right? are you using right language? Is the date right in your bios?

I actually spent this morning on live chat to MS - Apparently the store issue is a common issue at the moment, with the current work around being a DNS flush. So, whilst that's fixed my store issue, my clock is still wrong.

Region, Timezone, BIOS date are all correct. Regarding Settings > Accounts > Sync, the option is greyed out with the message, "Sync is not available for your account. Contact your system administrator to resolve this".

Update: My university email account bound to the Mail app was stopping me from enabling sync. I removed the email and tried with and without sync, no difference.

An interesting pattern though - Every time I restart my system clock resets to the same time; 12:30.

 

[Charitzo]

So a further update:

I saw some recommendations to try and re-register some DLL's, including:
- Wintrust.dll
- Initpki.dll
- Mssip32.dll

Wintrust.dll threw back an error: "The module "Wintrust.dll" was loaded but the call to DllRegisterServer failed with error code 0x80070005".

Initpki.dll came back with: "The module "Initpki.dll" failed to load. Make sure the binary is stored at the specified path or debug it to check for problems with the binary or dependent .DLL files. The specified module could not be found."

Mssip32.dll registered fine.

Supposedly one potential cause of 0x80070005 is insufficient permissions, so I went Appdata/Local > Properties > Security and gave Everyone Full Control, and got back "An error occoured while applying security information to: C:\Users\*user*\AppData\Local\*multiple folders*. Failed to enumerate objects in the container. Access is denied.

To see why the Initpki.dll came back as missing I did sfc /scannnow in cmd, and got "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them", and generated a CBS.log.

The fact this is the only solution I've found that's thrown back something negative, as opposed to supposedly working and then the problem persisting, makes me think it's something to do with this.

 

[Colif]

Which version of win 10 are you on?
right click start
choose run....
type winver current version is 1803 or 1809

right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
copy/paste this command into window:
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth and press enter
SFC fixes system files, second command cleans image files, re run SFC if it failed to fix all files and restart PC

if it comes back with an error asking for source, which version of win 10 you on determines if you can do the fix for that or not.

You likely need another PC to download USB/ISO since that is part of problem.

If you currently on 1809, try this:
Download a copy of the win 10 iso from Here - create ISO by telling it you want to make DVD - and then mount that ISO in file explorer (see Here) and then copy paste the below command into command prompt (admin) (spacing is important)

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /source:WIM:X:\Sources\Install.wim:1 /LimitAccess
Where "X" is the drive letter where the ISO is located. Simply change the "X" to the correct drive letter

If you on a version older thn 1809,. it gets more difficult as you need a copy of the ISO that matches current build, and unless you lucky, the better choice would be to download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB, and use USB to update windows to 1809.

 

[Charitzo]

Which version of win 10 are you on?
right click start
choose run....
type winver current version is 1803 or 1809

right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
copy/paste this command into window:
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth and press enter
SFC fixes system files, second command cleans image files, re run SFC if it failed to fix all files and restart PC

if it comes back with an error asking for source, which version of win 10 you on determines if you can do the fix for that or not.

You likely need another PC to download USB/ISO since that is part of problem.

If you currently on 1809, try this:
Download a copy of the win 10 iso from Here - create ISO by telling it you want to make DVD - and then mount that ISO in file explorer (see Here) and then copy paste the below command into command prompt (admin) (spacing is important)

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /source:WIM:X:\Sources\Install.wim:1 /LimitAccess
Where "X" is the drive letter where the ISO is located. Simply change the "X" to the correct drive letter

If you on a version older thn 1809,. it gets more difficult as you need a copy of the ISO that matches current build, and unless you lucky, the better choice would be to download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB, and use USB to update windows to 1809.

Currently 1809; I installed Windows yesterday off a USB install media, which I also created fresh yesterday.

Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth returned:

Path:
Online: False
ImageHealthState: Healthy
RestartNeeded: False

Re-ran sfc /scannow, and this time it returned something different:

"Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them."

I'll give my system a restart now and see if that's fixed it. Thanks!

Update:
The time was correct following the restart! So hopefully that's the end of it. Thank you, you've hopefully solved a problem for me that's survived over a year and two OS reinstalls. It has been correct and then broken again in the past, so I'll post back at some point to let you know if it's stuck, thanks again

 

[Charitzo]

Which version of win 10 are you on?
right click start
choose run....
type winver current version is 1803 or 1809

right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
copy/paste this command into window:
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth and press enter
SFC fixes system files, second command cleans image files, re run SFC if it failed to fix all files and restart PC

if it comes back with an error asking for source, which version of win 10 you on determines if you can do the fix for that or not.

You likely need another PC to download USB/ISO since that is part of problem.

If you currently on 1809, try this:
Download a copy of the win 10 iso from Here - create ISO by telling it you want to make DVD - and then mount that ISO in file explorer (see Here) and then copy paste the below command into command prompt (admin) (spacing is important)

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /source:WIM:X:\Sources\Install.wim:1 /LimitAccess
Where "X" is the drive letter where the ISO is located. Simply change the "X" to the correct drive letter

If you on a version older thn 1809,. it gets more difficult as you need a copy of the ISO that matches current build, and unless you lucky, the better choice would be to download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB, and use USB to update windows to 1809.

Scratch that, it didn't work. Time defaulted back to being wrong after another restart. Should I try downloading and mounting the iso and running DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /source:WIM:X:\Sources\Install.wim:1 /LimitAccess?

 

[Colif]

You can try the source command, it might help.

Makes me wonder though, as if you had same problem twice on 2 installs , why? its not a normal problem and fairly unusual as i don't remember seeing that error code before.

try running chkdsk on the boot drive, perhaps there is corruption of system files or certain locations on the drive. Is C drive an ssd or hdd? Perhaps run HDTune on the drive and check its health tab, let it run a SMART scan.

How about creating a new local account and see if you can change the time to right on it as the problem could be your user - https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/4026923/windows-10-create-a-local-user-or-administrator-account

 

[Charitzo]

Glad toi help. Makes me wonder though, as if you had same problem twice on 2 installs , why? its not a normal problem and fairly unusual as i don't remember seeing that error code before.

try running chkdsk on the boot drive, perhaps there is corruption of system files or certain locations on the drive. Is C drive an ssd or hdd? Perhaps run HDTune on the drive and check its health tab, let it run a SMART scan.

I'm actually running two 840 Evo's in RAID0, so I'm sure there's a nice chance for something to go wrong, haha. I'll do chkdsk and HDTune now.

 

[Colif]

I edited my post after you quoted it

 

[Charitzo]

I edited my post after you quoted it

A Microsoft support agent actually tried an alternate local user account earlier, however it didn't work, the time was still wrong.

chkdsk came back fine, no problems found. Could you provide more details on how to use HD Tune and perform a SMART scan? I don't see that option.

 

[Charitzo]

I thought it was a bit weird that it's carried through multiple OS installs. What's your thoughts on a BIOS flash?

 

[Colif]

go to health tab, and it will auto start a scan. just let it finish

See if removing sync data helps - https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/106159-delete-sync-settings-windows-10-devices-microsoft-account.html

does it happen in safe mode?

BIOS update may help, its such an odd problem.

its late here, i will look for more answers when i wake up.

 

[Charitzo]

Went to health tab, let it run, the timer expired and nothing happened.

Removing sync data didn't help.

Problem still persisted in safe mode.

I did just notice that my BIOS clock is now incorrect too, so must've reset at some point. It sounds so much like CMOS but I'm 99% certain it's not since swapping the battery didn't do shit before. I'll try a flash, see what happens.

Thanks for all your help so far

 

[Colif]

Since you have samsung drives, you can check their SMART score in Samsung Magician instead of HDTune. If you have the newest version, there is a Blue button marked SMART on the front page under the Drive condition header

I don't think its the ssd though.

If the same thing happens on multiple users and over 2 installs of Windows 10, I really don't think its a windows problem. Safe mode result also agrees with idea its hardware and not software causing the wrong time thing.

You can try turning off fast startup but be surprised if its a driver thing - https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4189-turn-off-fast-startup-windows-10-a.html

You might want to contact Asus

 

[Charitzo]

I think you're right to think it's not the SSD's, I feel like there would have been some other sign if it were.

I did a BIOS flash last night and that actually seems to have worked (so far). Figured it was definitely worth trying after noticing the BIOS clock was resetting to seemingly random but repeatable times, and not manufacturing date (as it would with a dead CMOS, apparently). I think the pattern was that it would keep resetting to the time last synchronised through internet time on Windows (weirdly). So if I last forced a sync at 13:30, every reboot would default the clock to 13:30 (however it would still keep track of dates to a degree? Really odd).

Just some weird issue with the motherboard/that version of the BIOS I suppose.

Regardless, thanks for all your help and effort.