Automatic Update Service Problem.

[BillyJoeBob]

Hey Guys, have a few Win2k-SP4 computers on our
network that have an Automatic Update icon in control
panel, which says the Automatic Update service is
unavailable and there are no services for Automatic Update
or BITS (Background Intelligent Tranfer Service) when you
look in Computer Management. They are all running SP4
which is supposed to install the Automatic Update service,
but it's not there. Have tried to reinstall SP4, but that
didn't help either. Also tried to install the AU Client
from M$ and it said that you could only install on Win2k
SP2 and WinXP pre-SP1. Have not been able to find a
solution for this. Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[serverguy]

I'm not sure what you mean by, "which says the Automatic Update service is
unavailable." Do you mean you get this message when you click on the icon?
Or can you open the dialog box but just cannot do anything?
Please clarify.

It sounds like you might have a policy enabled or something that is stopping
Automatic Updates from working properly. You would not even see the icon if
it wasn't installed so I'm not sure why the services are not showing up,
that is really wierd.
Maybe check the registry for existence of this key:
HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\services\wuauserv

It is correct that you cannot install the client if you have SP4, but maybe
SP4 didn't install correctly?
Were all the pcs cloned from the same image?