Re: Windows 2000 SP4 Update Rollup "Sticking"

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

"Dave Hawley" <DaveHawley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1140705E-8DE6-43A8-8AA6-4A0F7D9CDA71@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Hi Again Robert,
> Well I've done some more tests.
> I tried running the un-installer for the Rollup with a /verbose switch, as
> you suggested, and all that popped up was a screen telling me what switches I
> could use, and that wasn't one of them!


That's disappointing. FWIW here's the document which gave me the idea.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/deployment/winupdte.mspx

Notice that it also mentions "for compatibility with earlier versions
the /v option can be used". Perhaps you could try /v instead?

Also, I notice that there is the potential for a lot more logs than I was aware of.
I knew that the the location of logs and individual names was unpredictable.
That's why I usually suggest just doing a file find of all files which have changed
on the day of the update, sorting them by the Date Modified timestamp
and then scrolling through the particular set of minutes which the update took,
looking for potentially readable files. Drag such files to Notepad to confirm
your guesses.


> It did give me the option to make a log in a specified location, so I did do
> that.
> It's only the log it would have made anyway I suspect, but at least it's
> separate and not appended to the other instances of the uninstall which make
> the log very large.
>
> I then went to Microsoft Update, and was told not surprisingly that I needed
> to install the Rollup, plus several other high priority updates which
> presumably had been included in the Rollup.
>
> I re-installed just the Rollup.


If we can't get a /verbose (or /v from your spuninst.exe)
it might still be useful to get it from the update.exe (e.g. the install).
In fact depending on how the version checking is documented by /verbose
that might even be better than the log from an uninstall.
(I have never seen either; so I'm just hoping there is something
there in either option which makes it worth all this effort.)

Another alternative would be to use filever *.dll on the uninstall directory
after the install. However, I don't know what exactly is kept in there.
If they copy *all* modules which might have been used by the update,
regardless of version, that would be perfect for comparing with what the
update changed or for comparing with other users who have the update
but don't have your problem symptoms. E.g. you could use a for loop
on the module names and get an equivalent listing of the current installed
versions, then do a diff on those two listings to see at a glance what had
or hadn't changed. Etc.

Another option which I have never tried but which others in this newsgroup
have mentioned before is "The Belarc Advisor". Apparently it is freeware
for individual use. Try finding out what kind of report it gives regarding
version changes.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html


> This time it did download everything again, whereas on other previous
> installs, it had said "update is downloaded and ready to install" so
> presumably the downloaded files were being cached somewhere.

Yes. The SoftwareDistribution folder gets flushed periodically it seems.


>
> Anyway, it installed apparently successfully again, and disappeared from the
> Automatic Updates taskbar pop-up window, but NOT from the main Microsoft
> Update screen, where yet again when I scanned it was saying that the Rollup
> needed to be installed!

If we could just get a trace of that scan...


>
> This was something that maybe I should have mentioned before, as it may be
> an important clue. When the Rollup is uninstalled, it then appears in the
> Windows Automatic Updates notification pop-up window, as you would expect.
> When it is installed, it does disappear from there, but NOT from the main
> Windows/Microsoft Update IE page when you do a scan.
> Why should it disappear from one and not the other? I always assumed that
> they used the same criteria to decide if a critical update was needed or not!

That is a problem which I used to have the WUv4 and AU.
Sometimes AU would keep offering an update until I either
downloaded it and installed it manually or installed it from WU.
I'd forgotten about that since it hadn't happened with WUv5
or (yet) with WUv6.


>
> Anyway, I installed the other two Updates which were still reported as
> missing.
> These were the Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 6 Service
> Pack 1 (KB883939), and the 814078: Security Update (Microsoft Jscript version
> 5.6, Windows 2000, Windows XP).
> Why uninstalling the Rollup had broken those updates, and yet reinstalling
> it didn't reinstate them again, I have no idea!

Again, I suspect it will depend on what is kept in that uninstall directory
and what regressions are allowed when it is used. So I think that would
explain the first query. As for the second point how many ways have you
tried reinstalling it? E.g. if you are only installing it via AU perhaps a manual
reinstall would work.

Also, is 890859 part of the Rollup? Ramesh *speculatively* pointed
out that there is another install option available which might help force it on:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsupdate&mid=1e89fecc-b8b8-4e60-bed4-dc04d1a6311d&sloc=en-us

I'd still like to see exactly what the problem is before suggesting something
to do about it but I thought I should at least point out other possibilities.


>
> I have also e-mailed this to you, and attached the two logs, the most recent
> uninstall and the most recent install.
> They probably won't tell you anything new, but you never know!

You're right. More compact but no more detail than the last ones.



>
> Cheers, and thanks again,
> Dave.


You're welcome.


Good luck

Robert
---


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