Suppress popup window in vbs on timeout of Windows Update Search

I have a vb-script which checks if there are updates pending. Sometimes windows search returns an error (for example 503) and an error popup is generated. Since I'm not familiar with vbs, I don't know where to start searching for a solution.

        Set updateSession = CreateObject("Microsoft.Update.Session")
        Set updateSearcher = updateSession.CreateupdateSearcher()
        Set searchResult = updateSearcher.Search("IsInstalled=0 and Type='Software'")

The problem occurs in line 3. It says:

Script: C:\path-to-my-script\my-script.vbs
Line:   3
Char:   1
Error:  0x80244022
Code:   80244022
Source: (null)

How can I either prevent the popup from being generated or get a handle to it and close it immediately?

Error 0x80244022 means that the update server HTTP service became temporarily unavailable (for whatever reason). See this MSKB article for a list of connectivity-related error codes.

To handle this error put it between an On Error Resume Next and an On Error Goto 0 statement:

Set updateSession = CreateObject("Microsoft.Update.Session")
Set updateSearcher = updateSession.CreateupdateSearcher()

On Error Resume Next
Set searchResult = updateSearcher.Search("IsInstalled=0 and Type='Software'")
If Err Then
  'add logging routine here
  WScript.Quit 1
End If
On Error Goto 0

'more code here

Note that the above will indiscriminately terminate the script on any error that occurs when calling the Search method. If you want to handle different errors in different ways, you could for instance put a Select statement inside the conditional:

If Err Then
  Select Case Err.Number
    Case &h80244022
      'quit immediately
      WScript.Quit 1
    Case &h8009033F
      'wait some time and retry
      WScript.Sleep 900000
      Set searchResult = updateSearcher.Search(...)
    Case &h...
      'just log a message and continue
      ...
  End Select
End If