Still fails - giving up - Thanks anyway for your careful help

Thanks for your detailed explanation. My apologies for replying
so late (on 28 Apr night I had to bring back that PC to its
owner - my daughter - and then couldn't access it until today).

To make sure (I use daily W2KSP4, not WXP), I searched this PC
for any file with "HOSTS" in its name. I found only 2:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\hosts (790 Bytes, Fri 30 Aug 2002 14:00:00)
C:\WINDOWS\system32\lmhosts.sam (4,251 Bytes, Fri 30 Aug 2002 14:00:00)

Both, according to their dates *and their contents*, are
originals and don't contain anything that would explain the
trouble (there is only one non-commented line in "hosts":
"127.0.0.1 localhost").

That checking done, I followed your advice and requested from
http://www.kloth.net/services/nslookup.php an IP address for
"v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com", which returned "64.4.23.188",
so in the "HOSTS" file added the following line:

64.4.23.188 test.v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/V5Consumer/default.aspx?ln=fr

and tried WU again: failed.
Then I disabled that line (with "#"), and added 2 others:

test.v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/V5Consumer/default.aspx?ln=fr 64.4.23.188
http://www.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ 64.4.23.188

and tried WU again: failed again.

While keeping those 2 lines, I disabled the Antivirus (AVAST)
and retried WU: failed again.

So I reactivate AVAST, activate the Automated Updates in
Control Panel, and stop trying - Inch Allah. Thanks a lot anyway
for your help.

Paris, Wed 18 May 2005 23:39:10 +0200


----- Parent Message -----
From: "Robert Aldwinckle" <robald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Newsgroup: news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windowsupdate
Message: news://msnews.microsoft.com/eX3LKfATFHA.3344@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thu 28 Apr 2005 11:34:09 -0400 (Paris 17:34:09 +0200)
Subject: Re: The Windowsupdate site redirects and fails


> http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
> immediately redirects to
> http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/fr/default.asp
> which immediately redirects in turn to
>
> http://test.v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/V5Consumer/default.aspx?ln=fr
> which immediately gives "The page canot be displayed".

My nslookup indicates that there is no address there.
So you could try adding a lookup entry for it in your HOSTS
file instead. E.g. use nslookup to get an address for just
v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com
and then add an entry for that address which associates it with
the bad name.

However, it might be interesting to find out why you are getting
that bad redirect. I would suspect your User-Agent string.

Here is an excerpt from a previous post for how you could check
that:

<extract>
> why do Microsoft sites think I'm running Windows 2000 when I'm
> not?


This could be a question of User-Agent--what is IE sending with
its requests and what is being received.


(extract from a recent reply concerning a similar symptom)

I suspect it is not your browser which is telling you that but
the application your browser is connecting to. The thing that
you have to think about then is what might be between your
browser and the application. You mention some kind of security
package. Can it intercept the requests that your browser makes
and modify them? Specifically can it make changes to the
User-Agent string that each request contains? If so, that could
explain your symptom.

It's pretty simple to test this idea by comparing the User-Agent
string which should be sent with the User-Agent string which is
received. For example, here are some suggestions I recently gave
a user who had two different machines to use for comparison.

<excerpt>
What do you see if you enter this in an IE Address bar on
each?

javascript:navigator.userAgent

(the property name is case sensitive; so notice that uppercase
A.)


However, what is more important about the User-Agent string is
whether it reaches its destination. Some network security
products may modify it; so it is also useful to compare what a
remote site claims to actually see, with what the above IE
window showed you.

Steve Gibson's ShieldsUP! site has one such remote service.

< http://grc.com/default.htm >

(Choose Browser Headers once you allow it to Proceed.)


Another site which you could use for comparing browser
functionality is:

< http://www.gemal.dk/browserspy/ >


Post back your detailed observations if you need more help.
</excerpt>


BTW the last time I made this suggestion it *was* a case of a
bad override in the registry but it was in a different branch
from where you are looking. This was from the above XP user
whose requests were erroneously being interpreted as being from
a W2K machine.

<example>
> directions on that site and found a "Platform" string
> in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
> CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent"
> that had the 5.01 in it. I changed it to 5.1 and now the
> Windows Update Version 5 site comes up. Thanks again! :-)
</example>


HTH

Robert Aldwinckle
---
</extract>


----- Parent Message -----
From: "Michel Merlin" <michel.merlin@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Newsgroup: news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windowsupdate
Message: news://msnews.microsoft.com/OU6gMX8SFHA.1040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thu 28 Apr 2005 09:42:09 +0200
Subject: The Windowsupdate site redirects and fails

None has a solution?

Meanwhile I also tried to rename:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\wupdmgr.exe
into:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\wupdmgr-exe.old

then to type directly the WU URL in IE address bar:

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
immediately redirects to
http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/fr/default.asp
which immediately redirects in turn to
http://test.v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/V5Consumer/default.aspx?ln=fr
which immediately gives "The page canot be displayed".

When trying to rename back wupdmgr.exe, I find that Windows
restored it without asking me, making my try above useless.

Anyone can help? TIA,

Paris, Thu 28 Apr 2005 09:42:10 +0200


----- Parent Message -----
From: "Michel Merlin" <michel.merlin@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Newsgroup: news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windowsupdate
Message: news://msnews.microsoft.com/OeUVZ8VSFHA.996@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Mon 25 Apr 2005 08:22:00 +0200
Subject: WU fails (redirects to
test.v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/V5Consumer/default.aspx?ln=fr)


Windows update ( http://www.windowsupdate.microsoft.com or
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com ) fails on one of the PCs
I am updating today: WU redirects to
http://test.v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/V5Consumer/default.aspx?ln=fr ,
which is 404-ed.

Other PCs, on the same connection (tried LAN and Dial-Up), have
no problem.

The failing PC:

- is WXP SP2 FR, Works Suite 2003 FR (14" Notebook,
Fujitsu-Siemens AMILO EL 6800-2408, Celeron D 2400)
- has remained unused for 4 months (was apparently shutting down
a few seconds after any reboot. The owner thought her PC was
lost and stopped trying. I tried once but didn't find).
- last week I found the cause (someone else had switched display
to TV, so each time the PC was actually running fine but
displaying nothing)
- I applied all the big updates with the Redistributables I had
(WXPSP2 multilingual, OXPSP3 FR, OXP-KB833858,
WMP 10 FR, dotNet FrameWork 1.1, dotNet FrameWork 1.1 SP1,
Journal FR, Adobe Reader 7.0.1 FR, etc.)
- the PC is smoothly humming for everything else than WU.

Thanks to any help,

Paris, Mon 25 Apr 2005 08:22.00 +0200
.

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