mhsbrian

Any administrators or computer technicians may have a came across a problem lately doing a windows repair. If you run a repair on a up to date system you will have to install all the updates again. Just one small problem.
Microsoft release a update during the summer that if you run a repair on a OS you can't get the 80 some odd updates after SP2 ! ! !(This does not apply to Restore CD's, or recovery partitions).

It simply will not be able to install the updates at all after the windows installer 3.1 update(the installer for updates).

But guess what ladies and gents, I found a fix, and I wrote a simple batch file to fix this.

The batch file simple registers a few .dll files. Restart your computer and wallah after your repair you ran if weren't able to get updates, now you should be able to ! !

Simply download the .bat file and open it, it will open a command prompt window and register the .dll files, restart your computer and your done.

This will not fix other problems associated with windows updates. Some people get viruses or have their hosts file damaged by spyware, viruses. This will not fix that. This will only fix the Windows Repair issue with updates.

This works with XP Professional,Home ONLY!

**edit**

If there is any confusion with it, I'll explain in a nutshell.

If your run a standard windows repair from a oem or retail cd, you cannot update your computer, it will download the updates, and not be able to install any of them. Run this batch file if you have the problem and restart and you should be able to install the updates after Sp2.

Enjoy!

Attached Files

Windows Repair Update Fix.zip (197 Bytes, 526 views)

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Donnie Darko

interesting, but unclear.

are you saying that, if you run a repair install, somehow you cannot get your machine updated again, or only that you have to go through the hassle of getting all 80 updates.

i've done some programming, and really respect the level of effort that goes into it, so I don't want to rain on your parade, etc...

But running a repair install with an nLited disk solves the problem of updates completely, as they are already incorporated into the install disk and the repaired install is completely (or almost) up-to-date.

Mr. Mojo

This sounds like a pretty cool fix. The thing is, I learned back in the days of Win98 that the safest way to do things is to have at least a second partition, preferably a seperate HD, to store everything on. That way when Windows goes south on my I can just blow it away and start fresh. I don't think I've ever successfully performed a repair install or system restore either one. Now I just disable system restore when I'm doing my initial tweaking as it doesn't like me anyway.

For businesses or people that can't just format when they have a problem, this sounds like a good fix.

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mhsbrian

Yeah but how many people do this ?


I am not a programmer at all. But I am a administrator for many structural and architectural small businesses and man I cannot even express to you how many times after running a repair on a hard drive clone that it wouldn't update ...The way I make it less time consuming is that I have a HD that is a clone of their standard machines. So basically I make a clone of the drive, repair it, then 95% of the time since this summer it wouldn't update and I finally looked around and found a fix.

This is a fix for the dumb, the uneducated, or the uninformed, I'm sure anyone that has extensive programming knowledge probably how to fix the problem from the start. I fall into the uneducated criteria, but hey; I figured it out

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mhsbrian

Sorry for the double post but the edit button isn't working for me.

To explain more clearly what this is for


If your run a standard repair on windows XP installation. Afterwards, you cannot update your system. This will fix the error in the update manager and allow you to download and install the 80 and some odd updates after Sp2.

It's just a simple "fix". It doesn't make your computer think it's up to date or disable the alerts, it allows you to install the updates you couldn't before.

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Donnie Darko

I've been ditty-bopping around computer technical forums for about 5 years and have never heard of this problem, where the update manager doesn't work after doing a repair install. Nor have I experienced this myself.

Is this something that is limited only to the automatic update ?

If so that might explain it, because I prefer to set my updates to manual and do them all myself.

I agree with the importance of having your system competely updated. 90% of my client's computers are infected with malware, and 90% of those could have avoided 90% of the infections if they ran their system fully-updated, so having a "no-brainer" fix is very useful.

IF you can get them to appreciate the need for having their system consistantly updated.

It sounds as if this is some MS "bug", and I wonder why it is that they have not made a fix for it.

Do you have some kind of documentation that describes the technical details of this problem ?

mhsbrian

Everything you need to read.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9039258

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blupupher

Well, this works for more than just system repair.
I had to un-install SP 3 RC1 since it had messed up Remote Desktop, and afterwords, I could not update (manually or automatically).
Ran this script and they are installing now.

Thanks.

mhsbrian

Glad it helped you out!

Thanks for the repage!

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William151515

awesome, nice fix, i had this problem when ever i would repair, so hence after the few times this problem happened, i never did a repair ever again, i just clean formatted my desktop, and reinstalled instead of doing repair
but now i know there is a fix, but i still probably wont repair,
but nice to know its there, reformatting is a much more cleaner method

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