MS updates will not install

Hi, my XP Pro IE 8 will not install MS updates. It began after Avira AV found and quarantined a Trojan.Generic virus. I did full scans with Avira Rescue Disk, Eset remote, and also uninstalled the free Avira product and installed Kaspersky which also did not find anything else after a full scan. Antimalware MalwareBytes was not able to update so I uninstalled & reinstalled it and it's fine now, no new problems discovered either. Ran cleanup programs, combofix, Tdsskiller, no further viruses found. By the way none of the system restores would work so I deleted them, and re-enabled it.

IE8 executable had it's hidden attribute locked, I uninstalled and re-installed it and it seems to work fine. (Yes, I forgot to try the attrib function but it works now anyway). All the other apps and browsers seem to be running fine. I tried reinstalling MS updater and no difference.

This may or may not be related, but whenever I open IE8 I get a message stating that "A program on your computer has corrupted your default search provider setting for Internet Explorer. IE has reset this setting to your original search provider, Bing. IE will now open Search Settings, where you can change this setting or install more search providers."

Anything I try seems to make no change to this message.

Thanks for reading through this, I look forward to reading your suggestions.

 

Some malware, especially rootkits will prevent you from installing Windows Updates.

Try the following.

Open notepad and copy paste the following into it

Choose to Save As (All Files)
Name it: winxp reregister components.bat
The .bat is very important.
Now run your batch (.bat) file you created.
Reboot PC
Retry windows Update.

 

Thank you for the excellent suggestion, unfortunately the updates will still not install.

 

Found some new information in the Event Application section:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: crypt32
Event Category: None
Event ID: 8
Date: 7/18/2011
Time: 05:45:04 PM
User: N/A
Computer: JOE
Description:
Failed auto update retrieval of third-party root list sequence number from: <http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/authrootseq.txt> with error: This operation returned because the timeout period expired.


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Going to Help and support states that there is no information on this.

 

I've updated this before but I am willing to try any suggestions. I did try both the link you provided and also a MS site search, both with the result that no install is needed as the update is already installed.

 

Try updating via Microsoft Update http://www.update.microsoft.com/

 

Thanks, but no change.

 

No proxies. It turns out, after digging deeper into the system events log shows:

"The Background Intelligent Transfer Service service terminated with service-specific error 2147942405 (0x80070005)"

Searching this shows "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\downloader" has two files and for some reason they were set to read only status, this keeps the Background Intelligent Transfer Service from running, ergo no updates. When I unchecked that status the BITS was able to be started and updates worked!!!

Putting the Champagne aside for a moment, thanks for all your input to help narrow the issues. I will open a new thread as to why these and so many other important files are also set to "read only".