D
Doug Kanter
Alternative subject: Why do my friends drag me into this stuff? 
Everything bad happens to some people. I have a friend whose computer is a
magnet for problems. So, I called her last week to remind her to manually
run Windows Update (on XP Pro) because of some security issues I read about.
She says she's got it set up to run automatically, but still, I tell her to
run it. She did, and got an error message involving a validation number. She
knew something about the situation. A year ago, she hired some local
"expert" to fix something in her machine, and while he was at it, he
upgraded her from WIN98SE to XP. Apparently, he used an OEM copy, so
something's mismatched and the update process is aware of it.
I've convinced her to shell out the cash for a legal copy, and we're going
to reformat and reinstall. But, that's a month away, for various reasons.
Meanwhile, I have three questions:
1) She says she's got WU enabled to run automatically. Assuming this is
true, shouldn't she have seen a similar error message in the past? In other
words, is it possible she's actually up to date, and that WU only sends up
certain error messages when it's run manually?
2) Other than running WU manually and seeing the update list, does that
process place any sort of legible record on a computer, showing successful
installations?
3) Is there a way, perhaps in the registry, to convince Windows that all its
registration/validation stuff is correct? I'll be in front of her computer
this weekend, and I'd really like to see WU run, and present us with a list
of installed updates.
Everything bad happens to some people. I have a friend whose computer is a
magnet for problems. So, I called her last week to remind her to manually
run Windows Update (on XP Pro) because of some security issues I read about.
She says she's got it set up to run automatically, but still, I tell her to
run it. She did, and got an error message involving a validation number. She
knew something about the situation. A year ago, she hired some local
"expert" to fix something in her machine, and while he was at it, he
upgraded her from WIN98SE to XP. Apparently, he used an OEM copy, so
something's mismatched and the update process is aware of it.
I've convinced her to shell out the cash for a legal copy, and we're going
to reformat and reinstall. But, that's a month away, for various reasons.
Meanwhile, I have three questions:
1) She says she's got WU enabled to run automatically. Assuming this is
true, shouldn't she have seen a similar error message in the past? In other
words, is it possible she's actually up to date, and that WU only sends up
certain error messages when it's run manually?
2) Other than running WU manually and seeing the update list, does that
process place any sort of legible record on a computer, showing successful
installations?
3) Is there a way, perhaps in the registry, to convince Windows that all its
registration/validation stuff is correct? I'll be in front of her computer
this weekend, and I'd really like to see WU run, and present us with a list
of installed updates.