And please, no advice to get a Mac. It's not helpful, and some of my clients require that I have a Windows machine.

I don't seem to be able to update. When I look through my update history, in fact, I can see a large number of failed updates, going back a year or two. There are no instructions as to what to do about this at the Windows update site. Also, I'm getting a message that I have ActiveX disabled, so that the Windows Update site can't "display" properly. How did I do this, and how do I undo it? Or should I? Is that causing my problems?

[Update a few minutes later]

I should note that in my IE Security Options, the only thing disabled for ActiveX is downloading unsigned objects. Surely that can't be the problem on a Microsoft website? I should also add that the specific thing that it's trying and failing to install (at least for now) is Microsoft Installer 3.1 (something that another web site told me that I had to uninstall in order to avoid a different error message).

[Update about 6 PM EST]

FWIW, I just downloaded and ran Microsoft's beta version of their new anti-spyware software, and it found no problems...

[Saturday morning update]

Oops, spoke too soon. Overnight it did discover MyDoom and Netsky on the machine. I've removed them, but I still can't do the update.

[Saturday afternoon update]

Well, I never really figured out why it won't do updates, but I spent a couple hours doing manual updates for about a year's worth of security upgrades, and all seemed to go well, except for one, called ".NET Framework 1.1" for which it wants to install a service pack. Unfortunately, it's a catch-22ish sort of thing, because whenever I try to install the thing, it tells me that I have to have .NET Framework 1.1 installed. When I try to install that, it bombs out.

So I don't know if this is a problem or not, but it's the only thing that Microsoft wants to upgrade that can't be now.

Wasn't there a trojan that interfered with updates?

I don't know. That's a possibility, though I swept the system recently, and thought it was clean.

Rand

Pull your data, back it up to a firewire or USB drive, reformat and reload Windows. Then go and get all of your updates. Usually this is the only thing that fixes windoz problems like this.

You need to have a backup drive like this handy at all times, I do, even for my Mac.

Dennis

Addendum

I bought a really nice 80 gig usb drive that gets power from the computer. after you get everything back to normal, clone the drive to the USB drive and then you have a transparent way to reclone back to your laptop drive should you have further problems.

Dennis

I have a huge (quarter terrabyte) file server for a backup. The problem isn't the data, it's reloading all the software...

Rand

That is why you get a portable USB drive and clone it after you get it the way you want. This way when your primary goes down you just set your system to boot from USB and then clone it back to the primary drive.

A program like Norton Ghost will allow you to do this as it does a sector by sector copy and so preserves all of the OS, file system, and applications after the transfer.

Now of course on the Mac it is much easier but since you are doomed to live with stone knives and bear skins.

:)

Dennis

I think Mydoom (or at least some of its variants) modifies the local host file so the Microsoft update host is given a bogus IP address. You should check your host file for any remaining spurious entries.

As for ActiveX rejecting unsigned content, the only time I ever get a notice from Firefox that a secure site doesn't have current certification is when accessing Hotmail at MSN. Could be that some of the updates had the same issue.

The windows update site should work with the default settings for IE:

1. Make sure all instances of IE are closed
2. Go to the control panel and open then internet options applet.
3. Del temp internet files, cookies, and history
4. Go to the security tab and highlight each zone and hit the cooresponding default button.
5. Go to the Privacy tab and hit the default button if available.
6. Go to the connections tab and into the LAN settings button and verify your proxy settings. Default should only have Automatically detect selected.
7. Go to the Programs tab and click on the button to 'Reset Web Settings' and click yes to confirm reset web settings.
8. Make sure the option to have IE check to see if it is default browser is enabled. Yes I know you probably use firefox or some such but IE gets cranky if you don't have this option enabled. IE should always be your default browser as far was MS is concerned.
9. Go to the advanced tab and click on the 'Restore Defaults' button
10. Click okay out of the internet options dialog and then go back to IE and try to run your updated again.

Another thing to look for if you are using WINXP SP2 is that if your browser needs to run a activex plugin there is a rather discreet yellow bar at the top of the web page that you have to select to instruct your browser to run the activex setup. Otherwise it will appear that nothing is happening when you try to launch certain content.

Another possibility is that their is a DLL file in the background that needs to be re-registered into memory.

Copy and paste the following text into a *.txt file and then save the file as a *.bat batch file:

@ECHO "Registering URL Controll DLLs"
@echo off
regsvr32 /s urlmon.dll
regsvr32 /s url.dll
regsvr32 /s mshtml.dll
regsvr32 /s Actpr_xy.dll
regsvr32 /s Oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 /s shdocvw.dll
regsvr32 /s msjava.dll
regsvr32 /s Browseui.dll

Double click on the batch file to re-registered the listed dll's. (remove the underscore from the above file name, had to modify to make the filter happy)

Then, do the same into a seperate file for the following:

regsvr32 softpub.dll
regsvr32 /u wintrust.dll
regsvr32 /u initpki.dll
regsvr32 /u dssenh.dll
regsvr32 /u rsaenh.dll
regsvr32 /u gpkcsp.dll
regsvr32 /u sccbase.dll
regsvr32 /u slbcsp.dll
regsvr32 /u cryptdlg.dll
regsvr32 /u softpub.dll
exit

Then do the same for the following:

regsvr32 /s softpub.dll
regsvr32 /s wintrust.dll
regsvr32 /s initpki.dll
regsvr32 /s dssenh.dll
regsvr32 /s rsaenh.dll
regsvr32 /s gpkcsp.dll
regsvr32 /s sccbase.dll
regsvr32 /s slbcsp.dll
regsvr32 /s cryptdlg.dll
regsvr32 /s softpub.dll
exit

I've suggest breaking them up into seperate file since registering .dll's can sometimes bog down and lock up.

Let's try stopping the services, re-registering the files used and restarting the services used for Windows Update and see if that makes a difference.

Create a new text file using Notepad or your favorite text editor and copy and paste the following lines into it:

%windir%\system32\net.exe stop bits
%windir%\system32\net.exe stop wuauserv
%windir%\system32\regsvr32.exe %windir%\system32\atl.dll
%windir%\system32\regsvr32.exe %windir%\system32\jscript.dll
%windir%\system32\regsvr32.exe %windir%\system32\msxml3.dll
%windir%\system32\regsvr32.exe %windir%\system32\softpub.dll
%windir%\system32\regsvr32.exe %windir%\system32\wuapi.dll
%windir%\system32\regsvr32.exe %windir%\system32\wuaueng.dll
%windir%\system32\regsvr32.exe %windir%\system32\wuaueng1.dll
%windir%\system32\regsvr32.exe %windir%\system32\wucltui.dll
%windir%\system32\regsvr32.exe %windir%\system32\wups.dll
%windir%\system32\regsvr32.exe %windir%\system32\wuweb.dll
%windir%\system32\net.exe start bits
%windir%\system32\net.exe start wuauserv

Save the file with a name of "WUREPAIR.CMD" someplace you will remember such as your Desktop or a directory like C:\TEMP including the quotation marks in the filename so the text editor doesn't accidentally save it with a .TXT file extension.

Run the WUREPAIR.CMD file from the Command Prompt (filename: CMD.EXE ) or by double-clicking on it.

One final thought. If your MS antispy found any spyware. Its best to reboot the computer into safe mode and re-run the scan and remove from there instead of normal mode. Lots of spyware will hide and repair itself if you try to remove it from normal mode. Run the scan from diagnostic safe mode and it will have a much better chance of completely removing all the components.

I experienced the same problem on my home PC after installing Windows Update 896688 (MS05-052). It also caused System Info, System Restore, and Users control panel to cease to operate. MS has a registry fix for the problem. I tried to include the url for the fix, but apparently your comment section is not accepting the posting of any urls. If you go to the MS support site and search for knowledge base article 909889, you should find it. Good luck and keep up the great blogging!