You know--after composing this response, and doing a bit of research, I
realized that you are in all likelyhood eligible for phone support directly
from Microsoft, even though you have an OEM copy of Windows, which normally
would be supported by Dell.
If Windows Update is not working--you are unable to download security
patches--and that makes this a security issue. Security issues--problems
installing security patches, or obtaining them, or with virus infections,
are supported by a free help system from Microsoft.
In the United States or Canada, dial 1-866-pcsafety. If you are in another
part of the world, call the number for paid support from Microsoft (it may
not be toll-free)--and ask for the free support for security patch or virus
issues.
So--feel free to read on--but I think you might well be better off calling
Microsoft directly, rather than working through the sometimes tedious back
and forth that newsgroups support entails.
If you do call Microsoft--please let us know how it goes?
---
Sorry for the delay in response. I've not done much troubleshooting of this
issue on Vista.
Here's a question--is Windows Defender up to date in terms of definitions on
your machine?
If you start the Windows Defender user process from the Start menu, and
click just to the right of Help, there is a choice to check for updates.
This will take a little while--perhaps 5 minutes or a bit more. Does this
fail with an error, or does it succeed (whether or not there is an actual
update--just saying "up to date" counts as success.)
That process uses some of the same functionality as Windows Update.
If that fails, or even if it does not, but Windows Update does--it would be
good to look at the tail end of the %systemroot%windowsupdate.log file.
So--attempt an update operation which fails. Note carefully the time at
which you start that attempt.
After it completes do:
Start, and type this into the search box:
%systemroot%windowsupdate.log
and hit enter. This should open the log file directly in Notepad--if it
asks what program to use, use notepad.
Scroll down in this file to the time at which you attempted the update.
The idea is to find the beginning of that update attempt, and then highlight
and delete everything BEFORE that point.
When you've done that, do Edit Select All and Edit Copy, and copy the result
to a reply message to this one.
This will give us some error messages that we can look at, and, in the mean
time, I'll do some reading about repair processes for WindowsUpdate under
Vista. In general Vista is easier to repair and has more automated
mechanisms to help with that than XP--so I don't want to give outdated
advice.
This is a lot to digest, I suspect--let me know if it is too complex, or if
I can clarify--and I'll see if there is a broad repair process that I can
recommend without looking at the diagnostics--
--
