XP Home does not recognize updates

[Barry]

I recently had to reinstall XP home on a computer at
home. The install went fine and once settled in and
online, the autoupdate feature found about 20 updates for
security, etc. None of them required preinstallation of
anything else so I ran the update. While the machine
seems stable, Windows will occastionally pop up a dialog
saying that file it needs to run have been overwritten by
unrecognized files and asking permission to reinstall
from the CD. I am mostly concerned that one of these
days an unlucky keystroke will start a process I do not
want to run. Anyone have ideas about how I get Windows
to recognize the files as updates and not foreign bodies?

There is nothing on the machine except Office and all
software is liscensed and registered. Any and all help
very much appreciated!

 

[Ted Zieglar aka \Rocky\]

"...There is nothing on the machine except Office..."

Does that mean no antivirus software, no spyware detector and no firewall?

 

[Guest]

Sorry- there is firewall and antivirus- both Norton.
There is not any oddball thirdparty shareware or things
that could cause this. And it only began after the
update.

 

[Barryg]

Sorry- the machine IS running Norton for both AV and
Firewall. What I should have said was that there is no
homegrown, shareware or other esoteric software that
might cause this. The issue only started after the auto
updates.