After struggling with this Error 0x8002801D error problem with Microsoft Update on a Windows Server 2003 system for over a month, with some well-intentioned but not very useful assistance from Microsoft (nothing they suggested doing to solve the problem worked), I finally found a way to fix it!
The Microsoft support person who was trying to help (after suggesting all sorts or proceedures that did absolutely nothing but take up a lot of my time over the past 4-5 weeks) happened to mention that the 0x8002801D error meant "Library not registered" and noted that "It can be caused if the dll files are corrupted or blocked by the third party products." She wanted me to uninstall the (Grisoft AVG) anti-virus software on the server as the next in a long series of attempts to resolve the problem.
I was quite sure that AVG had nothing to do with the problem but got to thinking about what library might not be registered properly or otherwise corrupted or blocked. On a hunch, I decided to download and (re-) install the latest version of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Server (IE7-WindowsServer2003-x86-enu.exe).
That worked! It solved the problem with Microsoft Update!
Since I had long been Googling this error code to try to find a resolution (other than the standard advice to re-register MSXML3.dll which did not help at all) for this problem and had found nothing useful I decided to take the time to post this message in case it might be helpful to someone else, since I nowhere found any advice to try re-installing IE7 in order to resolve this particular problem (and quite a few instances where folks had asked for help with it without getting a satisfactory resolution).
So my suggestion is to try re-installing IE7. It definitely worked for me. Maybe it will work for you, too.
All the best,
will
William F. Zachmann, President
Canopus Research Inc.
http://www.canopusresearch.com
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