Broken Windows Updates

This post was inspired by a folder cleanup in which I found a note to myself from earlier in the year (May 27, 2008). I'm putting it here as a quick reference, as it's the sort of thing that happens once in a while, and filtering through all the google hits can be time consuming when you just need to fix something now. *

Symptom: Neither Windows Update or Microsoft Update would complete. The machine in question in this instance was a vanilla P4 somethingorother, running XP pro. Before finding this solution I tried a bunch of things, including an install of Service Pack 3.

You can read the full thread on the techarena forums. I found it via a google search, I'm not familiar with this forum in general. The bit that I needed is from post 3 in the thread:

Start regedit.exe and delete the following key (contains the WU
service configuration):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\wuauserv

Do a reboot now!

Then run this command line (from a command prompt of from Start/Run, it
installs the AutoUpdate service (line will wrap in the newsreader!):

%SystemRoot%\System32\rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall
132 %SystemRoot%\inf\au.inf

(it must be a space between DefaultInstall and 132)

If it asks for your OS CD-ROM to get some files, just point it to the
folder %windir%\System32 (%windir% is typically C:\Windows).

Then run the following commands:

regsvr32.exe wuaueng.dll
regsvr32.exe wuapi.dll
regsvr32.exe wups.dll
regsvr32.exe wucltui.dll

Do a reboot again.

Then check if you can start and stop the Automatic Updates service
successfully from services.msc

These steps repaired the problem.

* Caveat: This sort of stuff does change from time to time, but it should still serve as an indication of the sorts of problems you should look for if you have similar symptoms. At the very least, you might include some of the relevant terms in your search to speed things up.

Windows XP Service Pack 3

I've just completed my first trial run with XP service pack 3. I installed it on top of a fresh copy of windows XP Professional, installed i a VMWare virtual machine. It installed without a hitch, seemed faster than the SP2 installation.

I've since run a Windows update check, and there were only 3 "high priority" updates. Not perfect, but much better than the several hundred MB of downloads and several reboots required after an SP2 installation.

My plan is to install a few basics and keep a copy of this VM for use as a base for various tasks. The first one will be a Visual Studio 2008 VM. 8 GB will probably be just enough* for this, but if I can keep it to 8 GB I can burn copies to DVD. My intention is to have task specific VM's, rather than one do-everything machine.

It will require a little more discipline, but I think it will serve me better in the long run, especially as I do more and more on Linux. Launching a Windows VM on demand should be more convenient than dual booting, except perhaps for gaming. However, my computer gaming time is pretty much non-existent these days, so it's not really much of a sacrifice.

* As it turns out, 8 GB really insn't enough for Visual Studio 8. Actually, the install was OK, but I removed C#, leaving me with less than 1GB. This, unfortunately, is unsufficient to install any of the docoumentation and reference material. I'll see how this goes, I can almost certainly have the doco on a second monitor / machine in most instances. Otherwise it'll be a 10-12 GB build.