What services are needed for Windows Update to work?

[cubby1223]

I really don't know why, but recently I slipstreamed a retail XP Pro cd to add SP2 (I'll soon redo my cds with SP3, perhaps that will fix it, don't know) and two out of two times when I've used it to perform a repair install of Windows on someone's machine, and when completed many services are stopped and set to "manual" including many involved with automatic updates, such as Automatic Updates, BITS, SSL, etc.

From past problems with windows updates I have a batch file that registers a dozen or so .dll files which has since recently fixed all windows update problems I've run into. I'd like to add on to this batch file the commands to start the services, and also set them to startup type "automatic" if possible. Or at the very bare minimum, know the full list of services I need running for automatic updates, if I have to set them one by one.



Actually on the computer I was working with yesterday, even after turning on all services, Windows Update (automatic & through the website) was still having problems, finds no updates needed for the computer, which is ridiculous because all it has is SP2 and nothing newer (for now I did manually download SP3 and install it).

 

[Continuity28]

Well, here's a list of services needed for Windows Update in Windows XP.

Automatic Updates
Background Intelligent Transfer Service
Cryptographic Services
Event Log
Remote Procedure Call (RPC)

 

[tcsenter]

There are rules for doing repair or in-place upgrade installations between different service pack versions. i.e. when the install CD is patched to a different service pack level than the PC. I don't remember the details but Microsoft has a KB article about it somewhere.

This wouldn't by chance be an OEM pre-installed image of XP? I have seen two systems in the past year or so, one eMachines and one HP, on which I could not solve Automatic and Windows Update failures no matter what I tried. The eMachines computer actually had not been able to successfully download or install Automatic Updates since it was shipped. The error log went all the way back to 2005! Failed to retrieve list of updates x 2000.

I spent a good four hours trying unsuccessfully to get it working without having to reinstall XP. Format C: > setup.exe (after backing up user data)

When the HP machine came to me showing the same problem, I wasn't about to spend that much time on it. I gave it 30 minutes before proceeding to Plan B.

 

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: tcsenter
There are rules for doing repair or in-place upgrade installations between different service pack versions. i.e. when the install CD is patched to a different service pack level than the PC. I don't remember the details but Microsoft has a KB article about it somewhere.

This wouldn't by chance be an OEM pre-installed image of XP? I have seen two systems in the past year or so, one eMachines and one HP, on which I could not solve Automatic and Windows Update failures no matter what I tried. The eMachines computer actually had not been able to successfully download or install Automatic Updates since it was shipped. The error log went all the way back to 2005! Failed to retrieve list of updates x 2000.

I've done numerous repair installs of XP over the years for various reasons. I deal with ~99% oem copies, and sell enough that every new revision I just make myself a new copy from the original Microsoft cds. Never had a problem.

But the last two I worked on were retail copies, I never sell them myself, all I had was a cd without any service pack, slipstreamed SP2 on it, and after the repair install on the two machines, each had a dozen or so Microsoft services not running. The first system after turning on all the services, Windows Update worked right away. The second system, not.


And, to help you out if you aren't aware, this is my compiled set of commands that fixes nearly all Windows Update problems:

regsvr32.exe regwizc.dll
regsvr32.exe Mssip32.dll
regsvr32.exe Wintrust.dll
regsvr32.exe Softpub.dll
regsvr32.exe Initpki.dll
regsvr32.exe Dssenh.dll
regsvr32.exe Rsaenh.dll
regsvr32.exe Gpkcsp.dll
regsvr32.exe Slbcsp.dll
regsvr32.exe Cryptdlg.dll
regsvr32.exe licdll.dll
regsvr32.exe Sccbase.dll
regsvr32.exe Msxml.dll
regsvr32.exe Msxml2.dll
regsvr32.exe Msxml3.dll
regsvr32.exe wuweb.dll
regsvr32.exe wups2.dll
regsvr32.exe wups.dll
regsvr32.exe wucltui.dll
regsvr32.exe wuaueng1.dll
regsvr32.exe wuaueng.dll
regsvr32.exe wuapi.dll