TeeCee

Thank you for the link, lotsa reading there. Before embarking on the info in the link I removed all updates/hotfixes and re-installed them without the /q or /z switches, a long tedious process. With one exception the update utility wizard displayed the message "You have successfully completed the KB****** setup wizard.", Add/Remove lists the update as installed today, the $UninstallKB******$ files are created as are logfiles with errors displayed. Had I not viewed the logfiles I would have been adamant that the updates were correctly installed. The one exception is KB946648, update to Messenger, due to Msgsc.dll not being present in the Program files\messenger\ folder, no big deal. The OS is the Corporate version and is currently running on 10 pcs all of which show the same errors in logfiles although all are reported to be performing without problem. Perhaps I'll take the easy way out, delete all the logfiles and not try to fix something which isn't broken. Gee, I'd still like to know why the errors are listed in the logfiles if everything is as it should be. Thanks for your interest.

Thanks for that Cluberti. I followed your instructions but did not find any file tmp*.cat in Catroot\<subfolder>, what was there was a Security Catalog file for each update. They were named using the KB******. So I deleted the lot, rebooted then reinstalled one of the MS updates. This produced the logfile attached which still shows errors.. kb978706.txt

Win XP Pro SP.3 Corporate Edition. Clean install. I d/l and manually installed 73 updates since SP.3. Many of the update logfiles show errors. Then I enabled automatic updates which installed five more updates, again some with errors. Add/Remove programs show all updates installed and the short report from MS when using auto updates showed the five updates successfully installed. So why the errors and can they be ignored? Logfile example attached with errors underlined. KB892130.txt