Windows Vista Vista Home Premium - update issues

I'm having a problem with a laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium - a friends machine and it was in a right state with disk issues AV etc out of date.

All seems ok now apart from the fact it was a bare Vista Home Premium - no SP1 or beyone had ever been applied.

Tried updates and it picked up various including KB951847 (SP1 for .Net Framework 3.5) KB974306 (Media Pack), KB970701, KB972036 (Vista Updates) and SP1. Update History tells me SP1 has now succesfully installed 17 times but the others failed.

I tried the very helpful tips from http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-vista/65310-windows-vista-updates-fail-install.html but still have the revolving problem.

SP1 gets picked up every time, seems to apply but yet again after restart it's the same updates that pop up as needed!

 

Further on this:

I have removed old out of date versions of Macafee and Norton Security Scan. Tried installing the updates individually - they fail.

Every time the updates tell me there are he 5 updates including SP1 for both .net 3.5 and Vista. Seems to install - sometimes, others clearly fail then when I come to shut down it tells me that the updates will be installed. Seems again to install, shuts down then on reboot all repeated again.

 

Did you use the Norton and McAfee removal tools or just uninstalled them from add-remove programs. You can get the tools from the relevant sites. What anti virus is left on the PC, if it is still running two of them remove one.

Is there a third party firewall installed as that can cause problems.

Do you have the Vista disc for this PC, if so you could try running a Repair install, called an Upgrade in Vista. That should clear out all the old downloads and start from scratch.

Sorry if you have already tried these suggestions, if they were in the link you gave, but that is a long thread and I didn't have time to read it all.

 

Thanks Mark,

All very useful suggestions which I'll be trying later. I'll post any progress.

 

Thanks Mark,

Clean removal of both Norton and MaCafee using their tools.

MS Security Essentials now the lone protector.


Tried booting with the OS Disk in and running repair - the problems still there though?

Even though SP1 is listed as installed in Updates home the system is still picking it up for an install.

 

A further thought I see that Rapport the banking Security programme is active on this PC. I recently had an issue on another Vista OS PC protected by Sophos where Sophos went loopy because Rapport was present. I wonder now?

 

That software may be a problem, not come across it before. Disable it and try the download's again, but first follow this:

Go into windows explorer and open, Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download folder, delete all the files inside this folder but leave the empty folder behind.

 

Solved

Now a happy PC.

Running Upgrade as suggested in these most helpful responses worked.

Thanks very much team.

I can't see an option to mark this as solved?

 

Your welcome, glad it's all OK now.

You can mark the post as resolved from the Thread Tools tab in the top right hand corner of the first post.

 

Apologies - Admin.

It was something I meant to do but forgot, your reminder was a useful refresh on how to do it.

Thanks very much for a very useful forum.