Windows Update site - IE "cannot display the webpage"

Hi Elizabeth,
Well, I downloaded Portable, unzipped it and clicked on the portup.exe. The check marks were already in the "tools that must be downloaded, so I hit "start". After all 3 items were downloaded, I clicked on "search" and then start. The "searching" meter started and there was a note in the box that said it could take a few minutes or hours to complete the search. Well, I let it run for 6 hours, 10 minutes and stopped it as I was getting close to going to bed and didn't want to let my PC run all night if I was doing something wrong. After I stopped it, the "log" said it was stopped "prematurely" and "0" updates were found. I assume all that time is lost and I'll have to start over after I find out if I was doing things right or whatever changes I need to make. I've got a some questions:
1. When portup was searching, if it found something would it have appeared in the search window or does it wait until "all" the updates are found then load them in the window to view ??
2. How could a search go on for over 6 hours and "nothing" be found ??
3. When it was running and I looked at task manager, the only activity I could see was Svchost and NIS.exe (Norton) changing in size, and my modem lights sporatically. And, my cpu was "maxed out" the entire time just the same as when I've tried to use the MS Update feature that doesn't work for me anymore.
4. Above you say, "The best way is to get the PC updated.....and forget it the next time. Are you saying that MS Update will be working again once I get all of the updates installed, or that I will have all the updates on a USB drive and won't have to "search" for them anymore ??
5. If I'm ever able to get a "successful" search done with updates "found" and downloaded, will I be able to do other searches to just look for updates that have been released since the first successful portup search or will I have to add "new" updates to the list "manually" ??
6. If I ever get a list of updates to install using portup, is the "sequence" important to the install or does the portup install feature take care of that ??
7. What's the longest time you've heard of for portup to do a "completed" update search successfully? You had mentions 4.5 hours before.

I'm pretty disappointed at the this time, so please tell me what I'm doing wrong so I can get this process going. The portup "log" did show my last successful "MS Update" runs, back in March and April so is it starting it's search from there or looking at "every" update that's ever been done on my PC ??

 

I am wondering if maybe portable updates is not working anymore, as I let it run for 8 hours today, and it said 0 updates, the first time I ever ran it , it downloaded the needed tools and then did an online search for all updates pertinent to xp and office 2003, then under download there were about 120 updates to download and some to install if I wanted them, I cleared the check marks for the ones I did not want and downloaded all the rest, (they are in my cache now on a usb drive that I use every time I do a clean install.) I ran it today to see if it would download all again on a different usb, but got tired of letting it search, the first time I did this it only took an hour or so to search and then a couple of hours to download all my updates.

Go with WSUS (as per PJ America's reply), I have used wsus before, long ago when xp was not outdated yet. I stopped using it because it would not let me use an older version , kept wanting to update the program, but did not support xp.

I must have clicked an extra box somewhere when I ran it yesterday, I am getting ready to run it again, as it should only be 3 or 3 gb, not 8gb. (even to download the 8gb took only 4.5 hours) so I am going to run it again tonight. give it a shot in the morning, and make sure there are no checkmarks on any of the other pages, and just use the legacy page. when they are downloaded, if there is an update you do not want, you can look through the client folder and delete those,(I do not use WMP11 so I deleted that).

 

reply #2: okay I did both wsus and portable updates. took 4hrs, total for both.

wsus, I only did winxp came to 1.2gb, I had office selected but when it came up with 488 downloads I canceled it, I know there are not that many downloads for office.

for portable updates, I checked on their forum to see if anyone was having probs with portable update and xp, one person suggested that msiexec be started so I started windows installer (from cmd prompt type in net start msiexec ), I also started auto updates and Bits, crypto was already on automatic.

Just for security's sake, since I already had portup on a different flash drive, I went to the registry and deleted any item dealing with portup.

This time I started portup from my flash drive where I had extracted the files to, and accepted the EULA, and downloaded 3 files that had to be downloaded and then hit search, it searched for a little while and then there were 136 to be downloaded, I downloaded almost all of them, it did not download .net 4 and .net 4 extended so I will either place those in the cache or just install separately when I do a clean install.

 

I am clueless on the Office stuff. XP alone though is not even close to 8GB. Under 2GB. I would never use Office 2003 if it took that many files and data to update. That seems far to large.

 

Yes it is too large, so since I already have all my office updates, I do not need to worry about it, and I did not really need to use either as I already have my updates downloaded, I did notice that Portable updates and WSUS both did not get .net 4 and .net 4 extended. I was just testing these out.

 

Hi Elizabeth,
I've read both of your replies and I don't understand most of "Reply #2" as to how to do all of the "moves" you reference. It appears to me that we have an MS Spy among us as it's like "whack a mole"; every time someone comes up with a fix to get updates working again, something happens to the fix. It looks like the "spy" is blocking everything people figure out on how to keep XP viable.
Anyway, I'm going to download WSUS and see how that works. From what you said in your first reply, it appears WSUS will allow a search/download to the external drive, so i'll try that if I can find out how to spec it when I use WSUS for the first time. I looked at your screen shot of WSUS and it looks pretty straight forward; time will tell for me. Hopefully, my next post will be a statement of success.

 

okay, and that was PJ America's screenshot

let me know how it goes, do not choose office remember, just choose win xp under the legacy tab and make sure no marks are on the other tabs

 

Hi Elizabeth,
The good news is that WSUS appears to have worked. The bad news is I don't have much of a clue as to how to sift through all of the files. I didn't see your latest note until after I'd finished, so I did check the XP and Office choices of the Legacy tab, but no other entries except to copy all the files to my usb external drive when finished, which it did.
So, how do I figure out what I want to try to install ?? Can I assume anything that is after my last successful MS Update would be where to start ?? Are the dates on all the files "release" dates, so if I choose dates after April 2017, which was my last successful update, that would get the ones I don't have. Otherwise, I would have to compare all the updates I already have to "all" of the downloads I got today. Anything that starts with "K" is an update, right ?? If I try to install an update for an option I don't have or I already have the update, the installer SW will tell me that, right ??
So, how do I choose the folders I have with update files in them. Tell me which folders are applicable (i.e wxp) and which sub-folers (i.e.emu, glb). And, I assume they should be installed in "date" order and if the same date, how do I choose ?? My goal is to get my PC to be able to use MS Update again, so I might have some upgrades for IE-8. I also have MP-11. But, if I can get IE-8 and WXP working, I would think that I can get back using MS-Update, right ??
Please lay out the instructions as detailed as you can as I don't have the PC knowledge you have. BTW, the process took about 1 hour for searching and 2 hours for download and copying to the USB. Total size is abut 6.6 GB.

 

if you read pj america's reply and mine you will know that you should not have clicked on the office updates, your download for xp should be no greater than 2gb, and you will not have to select the updates, WSUS will install all of the downloaded files when you click on the update installer.exe which is with the extracted files.

http://www.top-windows-tutorials.com/wsus-offline-update-tool/

a tutorial for you to view, as I cannot explain any clearer

 

Hi Elizabeth,
Well, I deleted everything I had done the first time with WSUS from my C:\ folder and my external USB drive folder, then started from scratch with WSUS again. On the gernator page I clicked on the "legacy" tab, then clicked on WXP, English, verify download and copy files to my USB folder. It ran very fast compared to the first time with "office" selected; it was done in 15 minutes. Then I selected the update installer from the downloaded folder on my USB drive and marked; update Silverlight, W-Media Player and verify package. The black square status panel came up and it started checking all kinds of things, which were OK and the last thing was an "audit" that passed. Then is stated it would look for all the files that I was missing to install. I let it run for over 2 hours and all that was there the entire time is "be patient as this will take a while" with a blinking cursor; so I ended the task.
I decided to see if I could "manually" install some of the updates, so I sorted the wxy\enu folder by date and looked at the updates including April (which was my last successful MS update) to the end date and there there were only 7 files (6 XP and 1 IE-8) I then manually installed them with the SW update installation wizard doing the deed for each one. I verified they were in the correct places via "add/remove programs" and they were. I rebooted and my PC seemed to be functioning as normal, so I tried an MS update and nothing had changed as after about 30 seconds of running, the cpu got maxed out and stayed that way; so I ended that task also.
I assume that the 7 updates I manually installed won't be an issue as the "wizard" allowed them to go to their respective places. I don't know why either Portable or WSUS will not work for me ??
Is there anywhere else to go from here ??j

 

Hi Elizabeth,
Well, I deleted everything I had done the first time with WSUS from my C:\ folder and my external USB drive folder, then started from scratch with WSUS again. On the gernator page I clicked on the "legacy" tab, then clicked on WXP, English, verify download and copy files to my USB folder. It ran very fast compared to the first time with "office" selected; it was done in 15 minutes. Then I selected the update installer from the downloaded folder on my USB drive and marked; update Silverlight, W-Media Player and verify package. The black square status panel came up and it started checking all kinds of things, which were OK and the last thing was an "audit" that passed. Then is stated it would look for all the files that I was missing to install. I let it run for over 2 hours and all that was there the entire time is "be patient as this will take a while" with a blinking cursor; so I ended the task.
I decided to see if I could "manually" install some of the updates, so I sorted the wxy\enu folder by date and looked at the updates including April (which was my last successful MS update) to the end and there there were only 7 files (6 XP and 1 IE-8) I then manually installed them with the SW update installation wizard doing the deed for each one. I verified they were in the correct places via "add/remove programs" and they were. I rebooted and my PC seemed to be functioning as normal, so I tried an MS update and nothing had changed as after about 30 seconds of running, the cpu got maxed out and stayed that way; so I ended that task also.
I assume that the 7 updates I manually installed won't be an issue as the "wizard" allowed them to go to their respective places. I don't know why either Portable or WSUS will not work for me ??
Is there anywhere else to go from here ??j

 

I am running out of ideas, as a next step, run a repair install, You should only do this if your install cd is at the same service pack as your XP that is already installed, if not there is a problem of programs not working plus you have to update to service pack 3, I would rather just do a fresh install. I just did this 2 days ago.
wiped drive
ran install cd
installed 4.5 installer (verified by running msiexec.exe from the run command
installed drivers
installed ie8
installed all .net up to .net 4 extended,( PortUp will only go as far as 3.5)
installed the latest updates that are not available from microsoft updates
then ran portable updates
then did all my preferred registry tweaks
installed offline antivirus
clicked on windows update from the start/all programs, it installed a couple of things and wanted a reboot, did that and then came back to updated Microsoft updates and ran my CUSTOM search. I only run custom because under custom you have the opportunity to hide an update, and I always hide the EOL update. So my custom search ran awhile, not longer than 30 minutes, as I ran to the store and back. there were 40 high priority updates of which I installed 39, and the next update was listed as having to be installed separately so did that, ran custom search again and there were a few more updates, did that and the next search only produced the updates I did not want, like silverlight, wmp11, windows search, smart card, powershell, windows live, and skype, hardware update , and the EOL update.
I was good to go.

I am not sure what happened that caused me to want to reinstall my OS, but when I ran wsus, and then later I went to open a document, I found that my Office had been uninstalled.!!

I will not try wsus again, I will stick with portable updates.

===============

since the first time that you run portable updates it will do a search for installed and needed updates , why not run a repair install, (do not worry now about programs and data, a repair install will leave those there) check to see if updates runs, (remember you need sp3 and ie8 for updates to run.) and then run PortUp. ?? this will at least let portup download all available updates. ???

 

Looks like I've reached the end of the road. I don't have a XP install CD. All I have is an "out of box" recovery set of CD's that I made when I first powered up this PC back in 2005. It also resides on my C: drive from the factory. I had to do an "out of box" recovery back in 2009 and swore up and down I'd never do that again, so bought Acronis back up SW and keep a current image via that. I've had to use that several times over the years and it's great, but not for this issue now.
Would it be worth it for me to go back "manually" on my WSUS data a couple of more months older than April, which I already did, to see if something I missed via MS Update would get me out of this dead end ?? I've not looked back a couple of months to see if there are updates in WSUS that are not contained in my MS Updates over that same time period. If I did that, can I assume that it would do no "harm", even if it doesn't get me out of this dead end. Of course I could always just delete those updates if they don't help. Also, if I did that is it OK to manually install those updates (with SW Update installation wizard) without rebooting after each install by checking the box "don't reboot now" ??
What a sad day this is to be beaten down by MS. I started out on IBM DOS and rue the day I had to switch to W-95. I appreciate you trying to help me; you are a great service to us XP hanger onners !!

 

when I am installing a bunch of updates manually and the box says restart now, I just remove the checkmark and finish installing the other updates, and reboot after, if it really needs a reboot the installer will pop up with a message that there is another installer running and to finish that first, then I will reboot and continue on. I am really at a loss to explain why you cannot get to ms updates. Nor can I explain why an image of your pc does not restore it back to fuctional use.

 

Hi Elizabeth,
An "image" of my PC "will" restore it back to functional use, "as of the date of the image". In the case of the "out of box" SW that came with my PC back in 2005, that means the C:\ hard drive gets "formatted" and then "restored" to out of box condition. All programs, data, etc. that have been installed over time will be gone. So, I'd be at XP-SP-2 (very early SP-2) and have to cobble together all the stuff I put on the machine since 2005. With my Acronis backup SW, it too is an "image" at a particular time. I usually do a "full" back up and "4" differentials before a full back up again. I don't have "history" back ups that go back far enough to get me to before this problem began, which is probably in the "Feb/Mar 2017" time frame. I've got stuff on this PC that goes back to some old DOS programs, lots of emails, photos, etc. that's just too much to keep backed up "separately".
I fought the change going from W-95 to W-XP for as long as I could. I got pushed into a corner back in 2005 where Norton (and all other anti virus people) stopped supporting W-95 and I just didn't want to take the chance of getting hacked and/or a virus that compromised my PC. So, I finally relented and I love XP. But, FireFox is going to take a look at things this coming September and "decide" whether they will continue with the ESR option. If they don't, that will be another stake in our hearts. And, if FireFox stops with security updates, most likely people like Norton will stop supporting XP also. That's when I'll feel like I'm backed into that corner I was in, back in the W-95 days.
If I can "manually" take the WSUS updates and apply them to my PC, then I'll at least be current "security" wise. It ran for WXP in 15 minutes, so that's not all that bad to do once per month. As for Office updates, I guess I'm just in a fix. From what I hear, Office updates are about at an end too for our versions. Such is life at this stage of the game. Keep up the good fight and the good work !!!!

 

https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/the-windows-xp-repository.26911/

you have to create account (free) to see the download links to an xp iso so you can create an install disc and not a recovery disk.

I do not have a lot of stuff on this pc, but every bit of data is on cd's and flash drives set to those items, one 8gb is for my music, one for programs, one for documents, so everytime I reinstall, I reload all that info. and still have it, and I also have my info stored at microsoft one drive, only 5gb free so I just store public files and my documents,