Monday, November 5, 2007

Windows Update Failure

How frustrating is it to have to constantly keep on top of those Windows Update security patches and fixes? Have you ever done a clean (Windows XP) installation recently (even with a slipstreamed SP2 CD)? There are loads of updates you will need to download in order to have a patched OS. Recently I was having issues with a PC that had many problems with it. One of the problems was that 'services.exe' was failing anywhere from 10 seconds to a few minutes after booting into Windows. To determine the specific service that was failing (services.exe can be an number of things), just look in your task manager and see how many instances of that file are running. One of the services failing was the Windows Update service. I did a system restore which stopped the services.exe file from failing, but Windows Update would no longer install any patches - neither through automatic updates nor the Windows Update website. The following solution from Microsoft Support solved my problem: To re-register Windows Update DLL Files.
  • Click Start, click Run, type 'cmd' without quotes, and then click OK. Type the following commands. Press ENTER after each command. You will receive a pop-up confirmation after each one.
  • regsvr32 wuapi.dll
  • regsvr32 wuaueng.dll
  • regsvr32 wuaueng1.dll
  • regsvr32 wucltui.dll
  • regsvr32 wups.dll
  • regsvr32 wups2.dll
  • regsvr32 wuweb.dll
You can find the original article here.