Windows Defender is a Windows 10 built-in feature designed to protect your system from malicious malware and spyware programs. Updating your Windows Defender from time to time helps to keep your system safe. But recently, some Windows users complained that while they try to update Windows Defender, they received an update error 0x80240016 and frozen the update process.
If you install another program while trying to update Windows Defender, the update error 0x80240016 might show up on your screen. The said error can also occur if the Windows Update client can’t access the user token. If you are the one suffering from the same update error 0x80240016 issue, you can follow this article till the end to get rid of it. Let’s see the solutions in detail.
Table of Contents
Fixes: “Windows Defender won’t Update Error 0x80240016” on Windows 10
Fix 1: Restart the Windows Update Service:
As per some suffered users, they finally managed to avoid the Windows Defender won’t Update Error 0x80240016 by simply restarting the Windows update service. Therefore, we also recommend the same here. To do so, follow the steps given below,
Note: Make sure before you start the Windows update service, close all Windows Updates as well as Microsoft Update windows.
- Firstly, in the desktop search bar, type, cmd in the search box and select Command Prompt window from the search results. Then you need to open it with administrative access.
- Inside the command prompt window type, or copy+paste the following command and then press Enter.
net stop wuauserv
net start wuauserv 
- Once done, exit from the command prompt menu, and try again to update Windows.
Fix 2: Reset Windows Update Components Manually:
The Windows Update service resetting alone doesn’t help you to resolve the said error then reset all Windows Update components. To Update all Windows components follow these steps.
- Firstly, in the desktop search bar, type, cmd in the search box and select Command Prompt window from the search results. Then you need to open it with administrative access.
- Then in the Command prompt window type, or copy+paste the following commands and then press Enter. (To disable the BITS service, the Windows Update service, and the Cryptographic service).
net stop bits
net stop wuauserv
net stop appidsvc
net stop cryptsvc
- Here user have to delete the qmgr*.dat files. To do so, type or copy+paste the following commands and then press Enter.
Del “%ALLUSERSPROFILE%/Application Data/Microsoft/NetworkDownloaderqmgr*.dat”
- Again type, this command “cd /d %windir%system32” and then press Enter.
- Now type or copy+paste the following commands to re-register the BITS files and the Windows Update files. After executing the commands, don’t forget to press Enter.
- regsvr32.exe atl.dll
- regsvr32.exe urlmon.dll
- regsvr32.exe mshtml.dll
- regsvr32.exe shdocvw.dll
- regsvr32.exe browseui.dll
- regsvr32.exe jscript.dll
- regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll
- regsvr32.exe scrrun.dll
- regsvr32.exe msxml.dll
- regsvr32.exe msxml3.dll
- regsvr32.exe msxml6.dll
- regsvr32.exe actxprxy.dll
- regsvr32.exe softpub.dll
- regsvr32.exe wintrust.dll
- regsvr32.exe dssenh.dll
- regsvr32.exe rsaenh.dll
- regsvr32.exe gpkcsp.dll
- regsvr32.exe sccbase.dll
- regsvr32.exe slbcsp.dll
- regsvr32.exe cryptdlg.dll
- regsvr32.exe oleaut32.dll
- regsvr32.exe ole32.dll
- regsvr32.exe shell32.dll
- regsvr32.exe initpki.dll
- regsvr32.exe wuapi.dll
- regsvr32.exe wuaueng.dll
- regsvr32.exe wuaueng1.dll
- regsvr32.exe wucltui.dll
- regsvr32.exe wups.dll
- regsvr32.exe wups2.dll
- regsvr32.exe wuweb.dll
- regsvr32.exe qmgr.dll
- regsvr32.exe qmgrprxy.dll
- regsvr32.exe wucltux.dll
- regsvr32.exe muweb.dll
- regsvr32.exe wuwebv.dll
- Further, type or copy+paste the following command to reset Winstock, finally press Enter.
netsh winsock reset
- Adding the following command, you will reset the proxy settings,
netsh winhttp reset proxy
- Again, by adding the following commands, you can reset the BITS service, the Windows Update service, and the Cryptographic service.
- net start bits
- net start wuauserv
- net start appidsvc
- net start cryptsvc
- After executing all the above-mentioned commands, it’s time to install the latest Windows Update Agent from Microsoft’s support page.
- Finally, restart your system and check for improvement.
Fix 3: Install a third-party Antivirus tool:
If the above two solutions failed to get rid of the Windows Defender won’t Update Error 0x80240016 issue, then you can install a reliable third-party antivirus to safeguard your system from all type of malware and spyware apps. There are several such tools available online, you can select the trusty one from them.
So, this is all about the Windows Defender won’t Update Error 0x80240016 on Windows 10 issue. we hope that this article is informative and helpful to you to resolve the said error. If you have any doubts or queries after reading this article, leave a command in the command box.
