Update Not Working 80040154

Kieran Top said:

A week ago

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lmacri said:

Hi Keiran Top:

Am I correct that you recently performed a clean reinstall of your Vista SP2 OS? Vista's Service Pack 2 was released in May 2009 and comes bundled with the old IE7 browser, and if I remember correctly the first Windows Update you run after SP2 is installed should upgrade your browser to the original build of IE9 (Update Version 9.0.1 / KB982861) from May 2011. If the last security update installed for IE9 is KB982861 then your Vista SP2 installation could still be missing several years worth of updates.

There is a known issue with Windows Update on Vista SP2 computers and the initial "Checking for updates..." phase can hang for hours (or even days) if there are a large number of updates available for download. Please see the step-by-step instructions on page 1 of m#l's thread Updates not working, it has been searching for updates for hours in the MS Answers forum for a possible workaround. Depending on the last time Windows Update ran to completion on your computer, you might find that all five Vista SP2 / IE9 security updates listed in STEP # 2 [KB3205638 (rel. 13-Dec-2016); KB4012583 (rel. 14-Mar-2017); KB4015195, KB4015380 and KB4014661 (rel. 11-Apr-2017)] are currently missing and will have to be manually installed before Windows Update can run to completion and patch your Vista SP2 OS to April 2017.

As noted in those instructions, additional speed up patches will have to be pre-installed before you run Windows Update if you have MS Office 2007, MS Office 2010 and/or the MS Office Compatibility Pack SP3 installed.

If the instructions in m#l's thread don't work please post back and let me know what method you used to reset your Windows Update components.
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.4.0 * NS Premium v22.11.0.41 * MS Office 2003 Professional SP3

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lmacri said:

Hi Kieran Top:

Am I correct that you recently performed a clean reinstall of your Vista SP2 OS? Vista's Service Pack 2 was released in May 2009 and comes bundled with the old IE7 browser, and if I remember correctly the first Windows Update you run after SP2 is installed should upgrade your browser to the original build of IE9 (Update Version 9.0.1 / KB982861) from May 2011. If the last security update installed for IE9 is KB982861 then your Vista SP2 installation could still be missing several years worth of updates.

There is a known issue with Windows Update on Vista SP2 computers and the initial "Checking for updates..." phase can hang for hours (or even days) if there are a large number of updates available for download. Please see the step-by-step instructions on page 1 of m#l's thread Updates not working, it has been searching for updates for hours in the MS Answers forum for a possible workaround. Depending on the last time Windows Update ran to completion on your computer, you might find that all five Vista SP2 / IE9 security updates listed in STEP # 2 [KB3205638 (rel. 13-Dec-2016); KB4012583 (rel. 14-Mar-2017); KB4015195, KB4015380 and KB4014661 (rel. 11-Apr-2017)] are currently missing and will have to be manually installed before Windows Update can run to completion and patch your Vista SP2 OS to April 2017.

As noted in those instructions, additional speed up patches will have to be pre-installed before you run Windows Update if you have MS Office 2007, MS Office 2010 and/or the MS Office Compatibility Pack SP3 installed.

If the instructions in m#l's thread don't work please post back and let me know what method you used to reset your Windows Update components.
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.4.0 * NS Premium v22.11.0.41 * MS Office 2003 Professional SP3

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wither 3 said:

Do you have Windows Installer 4.5 installed?

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Kieran Top said:

How do I check?

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lmacri said:

Hi Kieran Top:

Click the Start button, choose Run, type msiexec in the box and click OK. A window will open that displays the version number of your Windows Installer (also known as the Microsoft Installer or MSI) in the first line . The file is located at C:\Windows\System32\msiexec.exe.

View attachment 29550

I think Windows Installer v4.5 was originally bundled with Vista SP1 back in 2008 so if your SP1 and SP2 service packs both installed correctly you should already have v4.5.x.
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.4.0 * NS Premium v22.11.0.41 * MS Office 2003 Professional SP3

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wither 3 said:

Ex_Brit has both SP1 and SP2 for download. I assume the SP2 has all the updates since it was released. This site- claims to have SP2 with all the updates since it was issued-

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (Windows) - Download

Strangely, I couldn't find SP2 at a Microsoft website which purports to have all the updates up to April 10 of this year.

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Kieran Top said:

I need The x64 version

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lmacri said:

Hi Kieran Top:

Forum Administrator Brink pinned posts at the top of this Windows Update for Vista board with links to 32-bit and 64-bit installers for:

Service Pack 1: Why SP1 may not be available for you and how to get it
Service Pack 2: Download Available for Standalone Vista SP2

I'm a bit confused about what you've done to point to re-install Vista SP2. If you go to Control Panel | System and Maintenance | System does it say if you have SP1 or SP2 installed? SP1 is a pre-requisite for SP2 so SP1 must be installed first. From my 32-bit Vista computer:

View attachment 29553
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.4.0 * NS Premium v22.11.0.41 * MS Office 2003 Professional SP3

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Kieran Top said:

I have SP2

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• Microsoft has not performed regular purges of expired (superseded) updates in Vista's update catalog wsusscn2.cab since Win 10 was officially released on 29-Jul-2015
• The Windows Update Agent (wuaueng.dll) v7.6.7600.256 for Vista SP2 has not been updated since June 2012 and is not optimized for computers with slower CPUs and limited amounts of RAM

lmacri said:

Hi Kieran Top:

Then please go back to post # 7 and try my suggestion to install the five speed up patches recommended on page 1 of m#l's thread Updates not working, it has been searching for updates for hours in the MS Answers forum as a first troubleshooting step.

Davide Bianchi's recent 15-Oct-2017 post <here> on page 62 of m#l's thread confirms that those instructions should fix the slow Windows Updates on a machine with a clean re-install of Vista SP2. As I noted in post # 7, you will have to include KB4014661 (Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 9: April 11, 2017) along with KB3205638, KB4012583, KB4015195 and KB4015380 since your IE browser has already upgraded from IE7 to IE9.

The two main factors contributing to the "Checking for updates...." hangs for Vista SP2 (aside from hardware considerations such as 32-bit vs. 64-bit architecture, CPU speed and amount of RAM) are:

• Microsoft has not performed regular purges of expired (superseded) updates in Vista's update catalog wsusscn2.cab since Win 10 was officially released on 29-Jul-2015
• The Windows Update Agent (wuaueng.dll) v7.6.7600.256 for Vista SP2 has not been updated since June 2012 and is not optimized for computers with slower CPUs and limited amounts of RAM

As far as I know these Windows Update problems on Vista SP2 computer have nothing to do with the Windows Installer msiexec.exe.
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.4.0 * NS Premium v22.11.0.41 * MS Office 2003 Professional SP3

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