Manually installing updates and service packs to Windows Vista

[Karsten75]

I've just about lost it with this piece of under-powered junk I'm working on. It's a long story, but basically a guy that has little money came to me with a laptop he bought for $50 - without a hard drive.

I've now spent the better part of 10 days repairing and installing components and software on this thing.

Specs are: HP Pavilion 2000 (ca. 2007)
- AMD Turion 64 X2 1800 MHz
- 2 GB DDR2 RAM @ 361 MHz (max supported by system)
- 160 GB SATA 1.5 GB hard drive vintage 2008 (wouldn't recognize a 320 GB SATA 3.0 drive from ca. 2011)

I also had to source and install a CMOS battery, since that was kaput as well.

The system has a COA for Windows Vista and I happily happened to have install media for Vista (unfortunately, it's the original RTM retail version sans service packs. Native Internet Explorer 7.

So now my problem. After install of Service Pack 2, the Windows Update service stops working. It just seems to hang and drive a svchost.exe process to 100% cpu utilization for an indefinite period - I have left it on overnight and no improvement.

I have extensively researched this problem and even did a very lengthy series of repair actions to no avail. Some other repair actions refer to Windows Fix-it actions, but those seem to have been withdrawn for Windows Vista.

So I'm in need of some help or advice.

Maybe on downloading and sequencing the updates via the Microsoft Update catalof?

I don't know, I'm pretty much out of options.

 

[BadActor]

A couple of things you may already have tried. They work for update hangs in Windows 7 and may also work for Vista.

1. Run CCleaner

2. Run Disk Clean up and include the system files.

3. Make sure you have the latest Windows Update Agent installed.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/949104

4. Clear the Windows Update cache

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/91738-windows-update-reset.html

 

[Karsten75]

A couple of things you may already have tried. They work for update hangs in Windows 7 and may also work for Vista.

1. Run CCleaner

Will try this. But first I'd have to either install Firefox or get to where I can update Internet Explorer. Nothing on the web wants to work with IE 7 anymore.

2. Run Disk Clean up and include the system files.

This was included in one of the articles with manual procedures. I should have kept a list of articles and actions. It's getting blurry after 2 days. 🙁

3. Make sure you have the latest Windows Update Agent installed.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/949104

Now this is a problem. I know that at one stage I checked and my version was correct as being the latest for Vista, but that article has a "fix-it for XP and Vista and the FIX-it has been withdrawn. Now they say the only way to get it is via Windows Update... Sigh... circular reasoning... catch 22.

4. Clear the Windows Update cache

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/91738-windows-update-reset.html

Look similar to the Microsoft answers article I tried, but what the heck, I'll try again.

Thanks.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Download latest windows update agent for Vista here:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/946928

 

[Karsten75]

Download latest windows update agent for Vista here:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/946928

I must be absolutely as thick as two planks. On that page you link me to it says:

 

[SkyNetRising]

Just scroll down to More Information.