Windows Update Not Updating?

May 11, 2008 by Chris · 3 Comments

I was loading XP on a new machine this weekend and ran into a bit of a snag — twice. See, I figured the first time was a fluke so I recreated it an hour later. Ugh.

I’d run Windows Update on a freshly installed XP Service Pack 2 and get the Service Pack 3 option. I’d install that, reboot and go back. Everything’s cool.

Second time into Windows Update I’d get the IE7 option along with some other more minor stuff. Reboot and go back.

Third time it wouldn’t matter what options I chose, the download would be fine but the install(s) would fail with the message:

“Problem: A problem on your computer is preventing updates from being downloaded or installed.”

Very annoying. Some poking around the Microsoft support stuff didn’t turn up anything helpful, but a web search on the error message found a helpful blog article at Technipages.

Looks like some DLL’s get unregistered (or not at all) somewhere along the line. A 30 second fix got me back on track.

Pity I didn’t do that search before starting over from scratch!

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Tags: microsoft, tip, windows-update, XP

Comments

3 Responses to “Windows Update Not Updating?”

Alisha says:

May 11, 2008 at 7:19 pm

Not sure if I’m having the same issue or if my issue fixed itself – too lazy to find out, it’s just a virtual machine anyway.

I had to setup a new virtual machine for work today and after having installed SP3 on a newly installed XP w/ SP2, Windows Update would not install any new updates. Kept downloading just fine, but failed to install several times, even after restarting the virtual machine.

I had tried shutting it down a second or third time (lost track) and it looked like it was installing the updates, but since I wasn’t watching it or starting it back up afterwards, I have no idea if it worked this time.

I’m glad to hear I’m not alone though!

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Chris says:

May 11, 2008 at 7:33 pm

Sounds like the exact same issue. In my case the “Install Updates and then Shutdown” option looked like it was working — but it wasn’t. After starting back up again I’d see the same update queued up.

The link I gave gives the answer. Worked great

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Alisha says:

May 11, 2008 at 8:49 pm

Here’s an update. I started up the virtual machine and of course the updates were still sitting there waiting to be installed. So, I tried the fix and it seemed to work!

Thank you! If I wasn’t subscribed to your blog, I don’t know that I would have ever figured it out.

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