I'm helping an acquaintance with his virus-infested PC. Unfortunately, he feels he needs to continue using a particular web-design service that requires a .EXE program to be run, or otherwise we'd just go Ubuntu on it.

So.. I've wiped the hard drive clean, and reinstalled Win XP-Home (sp2) from CD, and then gone to MS to download/install sp3. At this point, the machine is supposed to be able to access "Windows Update" to get further fixes.

But the Windows Update website keeps redirecting us back to the "please install sp3" site, despite having done so twice already (and rebooted etc..).

Anybody know the fix?
Thanks.

What is this separate site you're going to to install SP3? Is there a reason you're not going through Windows Update? It's not like Windows Update didn't exist before SP3.

...now that I think about it, MS did change where Windows Update was located in SP3, I believe in an effort to make it match Vista/7 (and make more sense). They moved it into the control panel where everything else was, and clicking on it presents a window that matches other control panel items.

Prior to that, it existed in the control panel, but it was on the menu bar on the left-hand side. Clicking on it would open IE and direct you to the Windows Update website.

It is possible to get service packs and individual updates from Microsoft's various knowledge base pages, but the easiest and pretty much most sure-fire way of doing it is through Windows Update.

Pardon me if I've misunderstood part of your post, but that's the suggestion I have: go through Windows Update. It will present all updates in the order Windows wants them.

What version of IE is installed? As I recall, I had to install ie6 to do all the updates.

XP already came with IE version 6.

Mark, please have a look at this screen: right click on "this computer", select "properties" and have a look at what the general screen says. Does it already mention SP3?

If not, you can download SP3 here and then run it.

After you've done that, just install every essential update through the windows update service (not surprising, this only works with internet explorer).

Mark - have a look here: http://www.howtohaven.com/system/slipstream-xp-service-pack-3.shtml

It's a generally good process anyway, which you should do for next time, but it also includes direct links for things like SP3.

I'm not at the machine right now, but running winver very clearly reports "sp3" and "Service Pack 3" in the output.

Been there, done that. That's the problem. Windows Update still refuses to run, redirecting the machine back to the Microsoft pages with instructions to download/install sp3. I don't think they tested this combination.

Cheers

Heh.. even us Linux folks know that Microsoft has disabled Windows Update for all versions of XP prior to SP3.

Cheers

The odd thing, is that "Automatic Updates" can still be turned on, and apparently causes something to happen.

No information whatsoever on *what* it causes to happen in this situation, but we left the machine running overnight while it was downloading something in the background. Probably just another copy of sp3, but we'll find out later this morning.

Cheers

At least they waited a lot longer than Redhat did before pulling the *paid* updates for Redhat 7.1 ...

*not bitter at all*

On the plus side though, my Redhat 7.1 server remains running and unhacked despite a lack of updates over all these years

I blame Linus, Mark and the other kernel developers, they just made the thing too damn stable. If only it broke occasionally I'd be more motivated to migrate it.

Yeah, I still believe RH7 to be the best RH release. It all went downhill after that one.

I really did tick me off when they pulled the updates that I was happily paying a yearly fee to receive

Good idea. That's now plan3, if all else is still failing when we check out the machine later today.
I have a VMware VM with XP on our notebook that I can use to create/burn the disc iso, and then the Linux host can do the burning.

I know that xp came with ie6, but part of the updates is to update to ie8, which broke updates for me. I had to reinstall ie6, finish the updates, and the last thing I did was to reupdate to ie8, which then worked ok.

This was like two weeks ago...

Have you considered something newer like Win7?

I did an install of XP (no service pack) into a VM about a month ago. Windows Update wasn't disabled under the unpatched OS, nor did I find it disabled under SP1, SP2 or SP3. Microsoft is no longer releasing new patches for anything except SP3, and the process was a PITA (we have an update for your update system, but before that update, you need to update this other update system,), but it was possible to bring the box from 0 to fully patched using just Windows Update.

With that said, the slipstream procedure Rory recommended is probably the best way to go in your situation. His instructions are the normal by hand route, and the alternative way is using a tool like nLite. It can take care of the slipstream and ISO steps only, or you can go deeper and create a slimmed down installer. Just be careful if you go the route of really customizing the install, as it is possible to leave something critical out, breaking something like Windows Update from functioning properly.

It does nothing that I need, so why pay for it? I have lots of xp lying about...

Also, for my business machines, some of my software ain't win7 compatible (no new version available yet) and for what is available, I'm looking at thousands of bucks for the "upgrades".

MS announced the end of updates for win2000 years ago, and yet, my two win2000 boxes still find the occasional update.

I'm really not sure what you're talking about. Windows Update will work on any version of Windows XP. I can only assume you mean that Microsoft no longer supports anything prior to SP3, which I remember them saying, though I really don't have any idea what that means in practice (they've never seemed very good at "supporting" Windows in general).

And when I'm talking about Windows Update, I still count when you go through Windows Update and it insists you install SP3. That's still Windows Update working as it should.

I still regularly come across clients with Windows XP running SP2. I've never once had a problem simply running Windows Update and installing random patches and SP3.

I would think that, in particular, a brand new computer with SP2 would be especially easy to update. Yes, it's going to take a very long time and require many reboots, but I rarely run into update installation problems on brand new Windows installs. Though YMMV.

They have different tiers of support, and their announcements tend to be distilled down to "Microsoft ending support for X" with no context by the time it hits the general blog sites.

Consumers buying Windows off the shelf have a direct support agreement with Microsoft. This allows them to call in for support (possibly fee based depending on how long it's been since it was bought). If a customer encounters a legitimate bug in the OS that needs a hot fix, Microsoft would normally at least create an issue with the development team to address it in the future. However, if the product is outside support, Microsoft's support staff will stop forwarding on the issues to be fixed.

Separately from end users, there are the OEM support agreements, and these come into play with any copy bundled with the computer. The normal arrangement is that a customer calls the OEM first, and it's the OEM's responsibility to then forward on issues to Microsoft. These agreements may have different expiration dates then the agreements with the off the shelf copies.

And to further complicate things, Microsoft has different support structures for enterprise customers, sometimes negotiated on a company by company basis, and involving certain rates to be paid for site wide licenses. If an enterprise customer hits a bug, and they are paying for extended support, Microsoft may still fix a bug and deploy a hot fix. Sometimes these hot fixes only go to the enterprise customers, and other times MS will decide to deploy it to everyone.

Beyond all that, legitimate security issues tend to be addressed and fixed for everyone if it's deemed to be a high risk issue. Odds are good that this is why Larry is still seeing some patches for Windows 2000. Either that, or it's a hot fix to a component shared by both 2000 and XP, and some enterprise customer helped to push for the patch for their systems.

Ultimately, support will continue as long as someone is willing to pay, somewhere.

Probably not XP-Home though. And most likely a commercial version with fewer restrictions.

Oh well, downloading the "professional" version of sp3 (the .iso) didn't help either.

Any attempt to visit Windows Update still redirects the machine to this useless link. Oddly, "Automatic Updates" still works, but using that requires that the machine be left powered on continuously. Duh.

I might just leave it at that, though, since playing with toy systems from MS is near the bottom of my life goals.

Or I might redo it all again with a slipstreamed installer. But that would still requiring do the hardware drivers dance again to get video, sound, and ethernet working.

Cheers

Have you tried running the .EXE under WINE?

That happens when updates developed for other platforms also apply to W2K. Also, MS does not "guarantee" updates will be produced. Yet, sometimes they do release them, for various reasons, AFAIK.