I maintain about 40 different computers and about half a dozen of them now exhibit this system where the update shield icon does not display in the notification area. Some are running Windows XP and some are running Windows Server 2003. These machines run mission critical operations 24/7 and are at remote locations so having them install and reboot automatically is not acceptable. The machines are all set up to automatically download but not install the updates. I remotely log into them, shut down the running applications in an orderly fashion, then apply the updates and reboot at prescribed times.
The machines actually do download the updates, because there are notices in the event log from the Windows Update Agent with Event ID 17 showing "Installation Ready". Also, if I go the the shutdown dialog, one of the options is to install updates and shut down. Since these are remote machines, I have no way of turning them back on. Too bad there isn't an option to install updates and restart.
In the past, I was able to correct the problem by stopping the automatic update service and deleting two folders, but that no longer seems to work. By the way those folders are
%windir%\SoftwareDistribution
%windir%\system32\CatRoot2
This is what finally worked for me.
Stop the Windows update service from the command prompt with
Delete the BalloonTime and BalloonType values, or if you want to keep
a record of them, rename them to BalloonTimeX and BalloonTypeX.
The BalloonTime seems to be stored in GMT.
Note that the dates below are in international format
YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss with a 24 hour clock.
Set DownloadExpirationTime (if present) to a date in the past.
Set NextDetectionTime to a minute or two in the future.
As far as I can tell, this value is in local time and not GMT.
Restart the Windows update service from the command prompt with
NET START WUAUSERV
After a minute or two, the update shield appears on the taskbar, then I was able to proceed with the update installation.
Just registered here to say... THANK YOU!
This stupid little Windows bug has been driving me crazy and to finally find a solution is a huge relief! I had this problem on quite a few machines (with increasing frequency) and was getting quite frustrated that I could never manually select which updates to install via the little notification icon.
Just FYI, on my machine I never found any BalloonTime or BalloonType values. Nonetheless, I did as you stated and changed the other two values and it worked like a charm.
Windows Update Notification Icon Missing
in Windows XP
Posted
Just registered here to say... THANK YOU!
This stupid little Windows bug has been driving me crazy and to finally find a solution is a huge relief! I had this problem on quite a few machines (with increasing frequency) and was getting quite frustrated that I could never manually select which updates to install via the little notification icon.
Just FYI, on my machine I never found any BalloonTime or BalloonType values. Nonetheless, I did as you stated and changed the other two values and it worked like a charm.
Thanks again!