Windows Vista Windows could not search for new updates.

It doesn't get any better...

I tried that ; (upgrade from the system disk). First I was recommended to search for updates to the upgrade process. Predictably, it searched - without ever stopping - and after an hour I had to accept what I suspected before I started, that it was not going to be able to sdo this - this is where I started, after all !
I had another go and managed to bypass that step , and then completed the upgrade - only to be met by a message saying that the upgrade was not successful , and Windows would now re-install the previous version.
Which it did, only some settings were lost - including the e-mail programme ones.
I did a system restore to a couple of days ago , but still no joy with e-mail which it suggested I reinstal. So I tried to do that ( MS Office 2007- Outlook). It couldn't do that - suggested I needed an OS reinstal...
So now I am surely at the end point. I have shifted most of my data files to an external hard drive , I need to go through my software - which is still here - make notes of everything, see that I have disks or addresses for downloads, and then reinstal Vista from scratch.
I hope it works - it is very frustrating to spend hours/days in front of the machine and get nowhere .

 

solved..

Yes, thanks for all the help - even if it didn't work out. At least I was 100% convinced of t what I had to do when I did a clean instal.
But the first thing I did after getting security working was to download all the updates, and it worked fine.
After another 100 hours of work ( joke - or perhaps just a tiny bit of exaggeration) I'll get all my software back and running too.I w