[geeks] Windows XP, and activation

[Bryan Fullerton]

On 11/6/06, velociraptor <velociraptor at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/5/06, Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
> > Sat, 04 Nov 2006 @ 14:33 -0500, Nadine said:
> > > However, if you turn on automatic updates (including the variants,
> > > just inform, download but don't install, etc), it works fine.
> >
> > ...this doesn't do anything at all.  It never downloads anything.
>
> Odd.  I have not had a problem with it.

I believe you need to have relatively current levels of various
Windows components (Windows Update client, Microsoft Installer,
Background Intelligent Transfer Service, maybe MS XML libraries) in
order for this to work with the current incarnation of Windows Update.
I suspect you need at least the level installed with WinXP SP1, or
possibly WinXP SP2.

When you connect a virgin XP install to the Windows Update website it
will install these bits first, then (after the requisite reboot)
proceed to download all the actually important updates.

You can get updated versions of all these components directly from
various parts of the Microsoft download site, but you have to look
around. Or just do some Googling, there are lots of discussions about
this on mailing lists, forums, etc.

Bryan