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General discussion

Windows Update Problems

Jun 14, 2010 5:45PM PDT

Hi,

I have had a HP computer for 3-4 years with Windows Vista.

On Friday night when I turned of the computer only one update was accepted and the other two would not update. It said it was reverting to old settings and will try again when the computer is turned on.

I turned it on Saturday and it did the updates but it could not complete them. So it reverted back to previous changes, but this took 30 minutes to start the computer.

Same thing again on Sunday and Monday.

Today I went to Control Panel >>> Security >>> Windows Update >>> changed Automatic updates to manual updates and saved changes.

Will I have problems with my computer turning it on?

Will the lack of automatic updates stuff my computer up?

How often do I have to do manual updates?

I called the people where we got the computer from and they said update to Windows 7. In addition we don't know which updates are causing problems for you PC, virus' and software are not covered by Microsoft.

I called another computer 'fix it' store and they said I should have no problems.

I am now confused.

Thanks for any help.

Discussion is locked

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Re: windows update problems
Jun 14, 2010 5:50PM PDT

In IE, do Tools>Windows Update and click (in the left column) on Show update history. This shows you what updates failed. If you click on the failed updates it tells the error code (like 0x80001234).

Just this weekend, on my sons Vista laptop I had to hide one (old) update because it continually gave an error like you describe. I couldn't find a fix. With that update hidden, I enabled automatic updates again.

Kees

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I don't use IE
Jun 14, 2010 6:23PM PDT

but mainly Firefox and then Safari (would be my 2nd choice)

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I forgot to mention
Jun 14, 2010 6:25PM PDT

Did you have the updates as manual updates?

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(NT) That didn't make a difference.
Jun 14, 2010 6:28PM PDT
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Alas ...
Jun 14, 2010 6:27PM PDT

Firefox and Safari can't access Windows update. So for this purpose you'll need to use IE. Why care?

Kees