Fri, 08 Sep 2006

Windows Update Services

For some reason, best known only to themselves, there is a requirment that certain services be configured in a certain specific way to get Windows Update running on Windows 2000. (This probably applies to Windows XP as well, but I don't have a box handy to check at the moment.)

If, like me, you don't like unecessary services running on your system, you will need need to set the following services up as detailed to make Windows Update work:

Automatic Updates - Set status to Started and Startup type to Automatic. (No, I don't know why it's required to be set to start up automatically either. It's clearly some kind of braindead design choice by someone sans-clue at Microsoft. As an added bonus, the error message gives no indication that this is the problem.)
Background Intelligent Transfer Service - Set status to Started. You can leave Startup type at Manual.
Event Log - Set status to Started. You can leave Startup type at Manual or Automatic - though you really should be at least logging the information that the Event Log service provides you with, IMHO, so it should probably be set to Automatic.

You should now be able to run Windows Update and grab patches.
posted at: 15:42 | path: /technical | permanent link to this entry