Just busy sorting out a friend’s computer from endless crapware (he bought it 6 months ago, and it didn’t even have XP Service Pack 1 installed…yet another reason to avoid PC World…)… Anyway, I’ve sorted out the worst of the crap, but Windows Update is failing its connection - it gets to the basic ‘click here to check for updates’, but then times out when you do so. My suspicion is that it’s MS’s servers being overwhelmed because of SP2, but I’m wondering if anyone knows any different?
Ummm… I know this sounds exactly like the first search result you ever get on any MS online help query, but… Is the Windows installation an legitimate one? I have heard talk that MS would be blocking unauthorised copies from accessing Windows Update.
I just had a similar thing happen last week. On my wife’s computer, she had been using AdSubtract. It routes all your web traffic through their proxy server on Port 4444. I uninstalled it to put on a AdAware. After I upgraded it to Windows 2000 and tried to do the Windows Update, it was timing out and not able to connect. One of those times, I got a dialogue box asking me to check the internet settings. It was still trying to go through the proxy server. This might be your problem. Check the connection to the Internet settings. If there’s a proxy server, disable it and enable direct connection to the net. If that’s your situation, that’s what will fix it for you. HTH.