I’ve been building a Windows XP virtual machine for test purposes and needed to apply the latest updates (even with Windows XP service pack 3 it required over 20 updates to be applied). Unfortunately, Microsoft Update hit a problem and refused to install some of the updates, telling me that “a problem on your computer is preventing updates from being downloaded or installed“. I tried disabling my anti-virus software (AVG Free) but that made no difference.
Microsoft’s advice is to re-register a number of DLLs using the following commands:
regsvr32 wuapi.dll
regsvr32 wuaueng.dll
regsvr32 wuaueng1.dll
regsvr32 wucltui.dll
regsvr32 wups.dll
regsvr32 wups2.dll
regsvr32 wuweb.dll
For each successful registration, Windows should return “DllRegisterServer in filename.dll succeeded” but wucltui.dll didn’t seem to exist on my system. Even so, after re-registering the remaining DLLs, Microsoft Update successfully installed the problem updates.
Come on Mark – in this day and age, the title should be:
“Microsoft Update FAIL”
;-)
It appears that this problem is fully described in Microsoft knowledge base article 943144… it’s a pity that their own online help system didn’t link to that when I came across the issue…
Mark, I have found this excellent script that has cured a number of MS Update problems:
http://www.philmorgan.net/techie-tools/windows-update-bits-background-intelligent-transfer-service-fix-batch-file-for-windows-xp/
Thanks Colin – generally I don’t have a problem with Windows/Microsoft Update; however this specific issue (with that particular update) seemed to be quite widespread at the time.
I’ve come across Phil Morgan’s tools before and I’m sure this script is just as useful.