Windows Update has been broken for the last few days on Windows XP. As soon as IE8 loads the web page, it fails with error 0x80248015 before the user can search for fixes.

Why would anyone care? For one thing, although Microsoft stopped issuing new patches for XP, all previous bug fixes remain available, which is great for machines that have not been updated in a long time. Also, Microsoft continues to update their Malicious Software Removal Tool for Windows XP every month.

Most likely, this is a bug rather than an intentional action by Microsoft. 

For one thing, Windows Update was working until very recently and there were no announcements about it ending. Also, Microsoft servers just had a huge Schannel bug and the first fix for it was itself buggy. Finally, others have reported that Windows Update is also failing on server versions of Windows.

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