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In this
article I will focus on the main services provided by Microsoft to update its
systems. And I will stress one of them: Windows
Update. I will try to give some advices and workarounds to the most common
issues related to this known service. I will be based on Microsoft information
and on my own experience.
First,
what is Windows Update?
It is a free service provided by Microsoft to home
users for making easy the updating process in Windows Operative Systems supported
to date (see http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifewin
for further information). This service complements with Automatic Updates, which does simplify all these tasks, because it
by default downloads all the critical updates that our system needs. We only
have to connect to the Internet, and that’s all.
Running
Windows Update
To go to Windows Update, just Run, All programs, Windows Update.
If we go there for the first time, we will be prompted to install an ActiveX
control. We must accept and we get two updating options: express or custom. The
first one will give us only critical hotfixes (mainly related to security) to
install. The second one will give us all the updates available for Windows. We
can select whatever we want (custom option needs a greater amount of time).
When we choose the desired updates they are downloaded one by one and when
downloaded they are installed. If we are prompted to reboot, it is a good
choice and must be done.
Advice: take into account that Windows Update servers may be overloaded, so go to Windows
Update when the amount of traffic be
less (above all for a 56 kpbs modem users).
Download
time will different depending on the chosen updates and on the connection
speed. Fortunately most of updates are less than 1 MB in size. Windows Update gives us some kind of
information about the download time, but this is inaccurate due to the Internet
traffic.
Advice: in an overloaded traffic we may
experience a slow download. Do not worry, Windows
Update will (successfully) finish when possible.
If Windows Update successfully finish,
it’s OK, and our Windows gets updated. If not, we have to find what is causing
the issues and work around solutions according to the error numbers (if any).
We have made a list with different errors to help finding the solution. If your
error number is not listed go to Microsoft KB (http://support.microsoft.com) or ask
your question in the newsgroup microsoft.public.windowsupdate.
It is not necessary
to limit to the steps I give for a particular error. I advise to take a glance
to every solution.
Automatic
Updates
It
appeared for the first time in Windows Millennium and, of course, Windows XP
does well out of this feature. It allows us to download, in a transparent way,
every hotfix that Windows needs. To do this we only need an Internet
connection.
Footnote:
we do not have to open any port in the firewall to download, because this
feature does not need any local port, but remote TCP 80 and TCP 443.
Advice: you may want to customize this feature (setup time,
so on) going to System properties, Automatic Updates tab.
Microsoft
Updates
It is the
newest Microsoft service which joins Windows updates and other Microsoft
products (such as Office, for instance). To use it, we should go to http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate
and download ActiveX controls. When done, we obtain a shortcut in the top side
of Start, All programs.
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