Automatic Updates Fail to Install

For a while now, I've had an icon in my taskbar (yellow shield with a black exclamation) informing me that updates have been downloaded and are ready to install. They were 1. a service pack for Office 2003,2. I think an IE 6.0 update, and 3. Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter KB907492. Every time I'd tried to install them, they would fail. Somehow, I managed to cancel out the nagging prompt. (several weeks ago, but I don't recall how)Now I see the yellow shield is back, but the only update is the Outlook 2003 Junk mail filter. It still fails to install. I don't want to set up my XP OS to not automatically download updates, but I'd also like to get rid of this nagging failure to install. I use outlook express, so I think I don't really need the junk mail filter for Outlook2003, unless they somehow interact. Office 2003 pro came with this computer, though I don't use anything but Excel and Word. Any hints?
Thanks.

 

Failed updates

Hi Pete. Do you mean go from start to control panel to automatic updates? I did and there was no difference. They still failed, except that in the process of inspecting my computer, the updater had me "unhide" the previously recommended updates. They are Office Service Pack 2, and Update For Office 2003(KB907417). I also went through the update history on this computer, and was dismayed to find that there were some 317 updates of which about 100 failed. They appear to be the same 3 over and over again. The only one that appeared different was Office 2003 Service Pack 1. Sprinkled amidst all of those failures were some successful windows security updates, etc. I don't know that I'm up to the herculean task of correcting 100+ failed installations.
Maybe all I have to do is try and fix the Office 2003 service pack 1 and everything else will fall in place?
Did I follow your instruction correctly by going to update through the control panel, or did you mean something entirely different?
Thanks.

 

Updates

Hi Pete. I'll give that a try. The 3 failed updates are Office 2003 service pack 2, office 2003 update, and outlook junk mail filter. When I went into my update history, I also saw Office 2003 service pack 1 failed. As I mentioned, the 100+ failed updates are pretty much these 4 updates listed over and over again, at various dates back to October 2005. Thanks again. Vic.