Ran into an issue with Microsoft Windows Update Service on two Windows 2003 servers. I use a 3rd party patch management tool that calls the Windows Update API. This issue was preventing the correct list of vulnerabilities and causing Windows Update to error out. One of the servers would report Error number: 0x8DDD0004 the other reported an ActiveX issue. While exploring solutions I ran into the following error message when opening Add/Remove Windows Components via appwiz.