I charged and turned on my Surface2 for the first time in a week or so last night. I manually kicked off an update check which failed with error code 80072F8F. I rebooted and left it alone overnight but the error persisted into the morning.

 

The UI assured me that more information on this error was available online; the link took me to a MSFT troubleshooting page that assured me that no further information was available.

 

Plugging this code into a real search engine immediately suggested that I check my PC’s clock/date and sure enough, the Surface thought it was 3/29 for some reason. After fixing that, the update check proceeds.

 

This raises a few questions:

 

1> Why isn’t Surface automatically syncing the clock from the Internet time servers? My internet connection is fine.

2> Why is there no information on this error code on the troubleshooting website?

3> Why do I even need to go to a website for this? Why doesn’t WU recognize this code and force-check the Internet time?

4> How is it that we’re in 2014 and the WU error experience is as bad as it was in 2001?

 

This entire experience was, as they say in Redmond, “An Apple Commercial.”