Problems updating XP home

I've got another pc that I'm cleaning up for a co-worker. It was infected with all sorts of spyware and such, which I think I have sucessfully eliminated. They were running XP sp1 with no firewall, just norton antivirus which also happens to have expired 2 years ago, but I digress...I'm trying to upgrade to SP2 and the first time I ran windows update, it worked, but it didn't install SP2. So I tried going back to the update site to download it, but the system just hangs when it starts checking for updates. In the system tray I have 2 icons, one telling me that it's downloading updates 33%, and the other that SP1 will expire in october. If I click on the one telling me SP1 is about to expire, it takes me to windows update website and then hangs. And the other icon I can't get rid of. Even through task manager.

I suspect that the reason it's hanging, is because there's already an update process running. And it's eating up memory so everything is running slow. But I can't kill the dang thing. If I try to end it in task manager, it comes right back. Any suggestions on where to start with this?

 

Sounds like his SP1 is a beta. This link confirms the October 2006 expiration date. http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps#Windows

 

I doubt SP1 is beta, it came preloaded on an HP Pavilion. I'd hate to do a scrub & reload, but at this point, that might not be a bad option if I can get my hands on the install disks.

 

Is there any difference between that download and the one available through windows update? That download specifies that it's for installing on multiple computers on a network. And I still need to figure out how to kill the automatic update process that is currently running on the pc. Even if I reboot it still tries to restart itself.

 

right click my computer, properties, turn off auto updates, then do what you want. you can allways turn them back on. ed

 

Halo, the "read & run me first" page is like my holy grail for when I work on cleaning these computers for people. I can always count on finding an answer or two there when I get stumped on something. As of right now, I turned off automatic updates and that seems to have stopped it from trying to download from MSUpdate. (thanks tunered) And I've just started rescanning everything to see what it finds. Once I run through all the scans again, I'll run a hijack on it and spend some time going through that to see what else is hiding on this beast. Hopefully then I can get it updated and start installing some security on this thing.

Right now there isn't a firewall installed on it, do you recommend I install one before hooking it into the network to run the online scans or will it probably be ok?