The Windows update problem got a bit worse as there were now 10 updates that failed to install.

I had a look at the windows update log file and there were a load of 0×80004002 errors splattered about. Did a search for that error and found all sorts of help including the re-registering of several dll’s which worked but Windows update still failed, even after rebooting. I then tried something called Dial-a-fix which is a collection of known fixes from Microsoft Knowledgebase articles. Running that isn’t for the faint hearted but the updates still didn’t work.

One of the other suggestions was to run System Function Check to make stable the installed Windows files. Did that but the updates still failed. Next I read that I should try and delete the downloaded windows updates, stop the Windows Update service and get a new version of the Windows Update Agent. The agent I was able to download but when I tried to run it it said that it was already installed. Re-ran it from the command line with the /wuforce parameter and that did then install.

I then re-ran Windows Update and of the 10 updates one actually installed, I think it was some kind of update for Office 2003. Re-ran Windows Update and selected just the oldest update to install and that worked. Confidence was high, well sorta. Re-ran Windows Update and I let it attempt to install all of the remaining 8 updates and, waddayaknow, they installed correctly.  

Is everyone viewing Windows XP through rose tinted spectacles?

I prefer XP to Vista as its just easier to use and most software works on it but it still gets itself in a mess sometimes. I always have trouble with XP when its been switched off for a while, which sounds daft. I was away at the weekend and when I switched the XP machine back on it got a bit messy and I had to rerun XP setup with a SP2 disk. That ran OK but of course I ended up with IE v6 which caused some issues.

As I had been using IE v7 with 6 tabs when I started IE v6 it read a config file somewhere which told v6 to load the 6 tabs that were used by v7. It took about 15 minutes to load 6 instances of IE v6 and all were a mess. So if I can’t start IE v6 how do I download v7? I got around that by downloading the XP verson of IE v7 on the Vista PC and copied that to the XP PC via the network and successfully installed IE v7. 

Another problem that rerunning XP setup was that it mashed a driver file for the HP printer. I downloaded the driver file from HP and that got jammed. No way was that going to run. The way around that was to uninstall every piece of HP software to do with the printer, rebooting the PC and redownloading and running the HP driver installation file.  

I then ran Microsoft Update which found about 8 upgrades to be applied and they steadfastly failed to install whether I do the auto update or custom update. Still working on that. I’ve also just seen that my username has disappeared from the Documents and Settings folder where all of my documents were stored. Thank heavens for backups.

I was listening to Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott and Laporte was saying how he would love to be able to use Windows 2000 again as it was so rock solid. I don’t remember it being that. What I do remember is it  blue screened a lot. Maybe one of the reasons people don’t want to use Vista is that they think Microsoft haven’t finished XP yet, finished as in a stable product, and don’t want to get involved in the testing of Vista right now.

I started playing Call Of Duty 4 again the other day after a break of several months.

The last time I had played I’d got stuck. This time I restarted the level and got passed the stuck bit. In fact I eventually got right to the end. What a great game it is too. I didn’t like Call Of Duty 3 much but version 4 is as good as Call Of Duty 2.

I read that the Windows Update version of XP’s SP3, which I had successfully installed, is a bit light compared to the full ISO image version, not that I have noticed anything different with my smaller version yet. I downloaded the ISO image and blew that onto a CD and ran it on the XP machine, which already had the Windows Update version of SP3 on it.

The setup for the disk version of SP3 didn’t seem to notice, or mind, that the XP machine already had the cutdown version of SP3 on it and installed itself without any problems, I think. Now at that point I would have thought that XP would be in pretty good shape so I ran a registry checking program on it. That found 31 problem which I let the software fix. I then ran a different registry checking program and that found a further 59 problems which I let that software fix. Hmmm….

Search strings used to find this blog:

1. With Vista will my PC stall every now and then just like the Apple Mac?
2. Is it true that the SQAForums are the training ground for some very confused testers? 
3. If I put 6 different hit counters on my blog is there any chance they will all show the same number of hits?
4. In the race against piracy how come nobody ever has a go at the warez newgroups?
5. Do people have meetings to strangle the life out of any chance of progress and instead preserve the status quo?
6. In 10 years time after massive amounts of cross web page database pollination will personal data have any value at all or will all checkboxes be checked for everybody?