Hey My method was to download a torrent. Verified it with hash sha1 I think, Then added a product key I found online. I'm on virtualbox. I go to microsoft update page, and the green bar keeps rolling eternally. I tried erasing the SoftwareDistribution folder, tried changing the name, no luck. I tried erasing cookies. Am I just being impatient? Do I have to leave it updating for, say, a week? One of the methods is to actually update to IE8 instead because the update page could be an issue with IE6, but the IE8 update exe also hangs forever. I actually looked in the SoftwareDistribution folder, you know the one inside WINDOWS folder, and it managed to download 700mb of something or other. I don't know whether it did it all in one go. I also don't know if it's spoilt and corrupted if I turn it off while I updating, which i've done often in my impatience. Problem is I don't think I can afford to keep it turned on for a week just to test. Kinda lame the way XP is working so poorly, you'd think they'd have a better method. Any ideas anyone would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I thought that I was the only one having this problem. I have been working with and setting up a new XPsp3 and get the same problem when trying for updates?? I'm not using a virtual setup, I install to a practice partition. Now this XP has IE6 and I thought that that may be the problem. So I installed IE7 and then upgraded to "Microsoft Updates" from "Windows Updates" It still hung for about 15 min searching but it finally went through.
Thats just odd.. well, guess If I ever really need one I will get an integrated iso with the latest updates lol
That is what I am trying to set up right now. I already have one with all the updates installed that has about 290 updates on it. But most of these updates are outdated and have been replaced. Now with this new XP there are only about 125 updates so far as of yesterday. Big difference!! Right now I am not installing them into the disk, but use a batch file to install them. When M$ drops support is when I will finally install them with nlite.
Just an updated here: I just went over to my new XP and tried the update again and it only took about 1 min to search this time and found 2 updates needed!!
yeah must be they had issues then. I've already killed the XP VM I had running for this or I would check again.
OK I wanted to test this out again so I went back to Windows Update again, and it only took 1 min. to scan. Then I made an image of the partition. Next I formatted that partition again with the original disk. 20 min later I'm up and running. Back to M$ for the updates..... Back to taking forever to scan. Actually 14 min. but it seamed like forever. Like watching paint dry!! My conclusion is that there is nothing wrong with M$ site, it is the fact that when you first go to the site for the first time M$ has to compile everything you have on your computer and what updates you will need. This takes time the first time around. Once that is done and they have a record then the next visit for updates will go a lot quicker. This was all done with in 45 min
First time (and occasionally after that) there's a self-update of WU/MU involved (Windows Update Agent).
hey thanks that looks great. question though havent you ever updated an x86 win xp? because it seems to be only for 64 bit versions. i've been downloading using this program and we'll soon find out if it works on the x86 win xp sp3 i unfortunately downloaded lol
yes, I have updated x86 and x64 XP and w7, it even worked on POS2009. the first time you run it you can select what updates but after a few tries I ended up just downloaded all updates for everything in one go, it took hours but now I have all of them in one. it takes a few tries to get it figured out but its the best for updates.
All it took the UpdateInstaller was two seconds to decide that the 2 gigabytes I'd downloaded through the UpdateGenerator were no good on my XP x86. I didn't download them or lose time because of your recommendation so no guilt lol, I did it before you mentioned it and because I'm a bit stupid and stubborn. I don't see how you downloaded an x86/32 bit version of XP updates for two reasons. One is that the Update Installer, and I'm using 8.5, only has x86 options for Vista, Win7 and Win8. The Update Installer only refers to Windows XP in the section labelled 'Windows XP/Server 2003 64bit editions (w2k3-x64), so even though I frantically searched for an x86 version of updates it somehow mysteriously isn't there. The other thing is in the thread where you asked for Win XP SP3 everyone kept recommending x86 versions- did you finally find an 64 bit somewhere because I can't seem to find one. The only ones I see are torrents and SP2 and might or might not be sha1 safe. Maybe you're using another Version of the Generator?
Ok, I've tried updating through the M$ site and it wants a genuine Windows product key not the one I found in google, and it says ' the product key used to activate Windows on your PC is a volume license key that has been blocked by Microsoft' Turns out I was being impatient the other day, today it's working 'fine', but still blocked for other reasons. Not that I would buy XP, but it only allows me to update to Win7 lol.
hi arfoluls, Im using 8.3 from like two weeks ago, I guess they change it alot but what carlos posted is what you want. (check box for legacy) it works on x86 XP because that is what I use mostly and I have used it several times on it. dont give up, once you figure it out you probably wont use live updates ever again. it has other nifty functions too but I havnt experimented much with those yet.