I'm doing a Windows Update on my W2K machine, and there are seven critical security updates that repeatedly fail to install. Anyone have any ideas as to what I should do?

[Update on Sunday morning]

Sigh. Was it really necessary to specify a priori that advice to get different operating systems (I have two other machines running various flavors of Linux) or computers would be unwanted, and unhelpful?

Try bypassing Windows Update and doing the patching manually. Figure out the KB or Q article numbers for each of the updates and download them individually. Once you've got them, install one at a time watching for errors. Sometimes you can figure out what is going wrong if you don't have the automated tools telling you that you don't need to know.

Install Linux. Or Windows 98SE.

"Or Windows 98SE."

Windows 9X anything over 2K! That was funny! 2k is so much better than 98 it is not even in the same Galaxy.

When that's happened to me on XP, I am sometimes able to get the patches installed by just running Update later. That would point to an issue on Microsoft's side.

Update also really wants you to reboot each time, and then start Update afresh after each reboot. Some updates have updates that Update won't catch without the reboot. I've seen it generate bogus patch lists otherwise.

You could try asking the Geek, who lives next door, for help... that's what I did. :)

Dunno. Check your disk space & swap space and make sure you have plenty, other than that, try installing them separately.

I did have this problem before (and it was a nasty one- there was a worm associated with the hole- but my firewall protected me), for some weird reason it eventually went away and it installed.

Ditch Windows and switch to Macintosh :P

http://support.micro$oft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;223300

this might be helpful. Just check the logs after the failure and find the exact spot where it fails from there.

omg: Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content: micro$oft.com

Umm, yeah Rand, you _did_ need to specify that you didn't want to change operating systems. Microsoft hasn't made a stable operating system since Win98SE. Note that it is five years after the release of W2K, and you are still receiving critical security updates.

"Microsoft hasn't made a stable operating system since Win98SE."

98SE stable? LOL!!!

There is a difference between security updates and stability. The reason you don't see more for 98 is that Microsoft has stopped supporting it.

NT4 was 5X more stable than 98.

2000 is 20x more stable that 9X anything.

Take careful note of the failure text and perform a search on the Micrsoft Technet Knowledge base. In my own experience as a beta tester, some of these type of failure are a result of insufficient/incorrect security settings/access levels. The error message you get should give some detail on this (you should see this in the event log).

If you're still having a problem, try cleaning out your temporary files folders. This includes c:\temp, windows\temp, and the "documents and Settings\[login name]\local settings\temp" directory. There may be remnants of former installations buried in there that tare confusing the installer.

(Are there certain people who Google all day for any mention of Windows, just so they can swoop in and advise people to uninstall it? I wonder sometimes.)

Did you ever find a solution, Rand? I just developed what may be a similar issue. I tried to download a driver update from the manufacturer of my new laptop, and the installer spins forever. It isn't hanging, because the window updates, but the progress bar hasn't moved in the last half hour.

No, but I haven't tried any of the suggestions yet--I was doing it on the weekend, and now that I'm back to doing work stuff I can't shut down all of my applications to try it. I'll play with it some more this weekend. I'm not that concerned about not having the updates--most of them look like things that happen when you go to a website with Explorer, and I almost never use Explorer. I'm also behind redundant firewalls.

Never mind, found the solution for my problem. A hosed installation of IIS was blocking the Microsoft Installer from working for any other app. Go figure.