Dave-H

Well I finally managed to update both of my XP installations. My main machine scanned on Microsoft Update for several hours, but then eventually did all the updates correctly. The yellow shield did show in the system tray when the updates appeared, but it hadn't until then. The first attempt on my netbook scanned for 16 hours before finally showing the list. The yellow shield never appeared. When I went to install the updates, it went to "preparing for download", but never apparently went any further, even after being left for an hour. I tried to cancel it, and it said it was cancelling, but then just apparently hung on that, so I eventually just rebooted. On the second attempt it was 25 hours before the list appeared! The yellow shield did appear this time, about a third of the way through. When I went to install again, it said the updates were already downloaded, so it looks as if they did download the first time, it just didn't show it. They all installed fine, eventually, although the .NET 4.0 and .NET 2.0 updates each took a very long time, as .NET updates always seem to As there doesn't seem to be any evidence that automatic updates are installing any more quickly that those scanned for on the update site, how genuine in-use WEPOS machines are managing to update themselves heaven only knows! I guess most must be on 24/7 so it doesn't matter if it takes literally days to do in the background! Microsoft must surely be aware of this, legitimate WEPOS users trying to manually update machines must surely have reported it. They don't seem to be exactly rushing to do anything about it though, even though the system is supported for another two years!

The link under the Tools menu is redirecting to a Microsoft Support FAQ page, and MS Support pages now don't work at all in IE8. Unfortunately its URL is not in the registry either, it seems to be hard coded into a DLL somewhere so cannot be made to work. Of course if it's in one of the IE8 DLLs that are updated most months on Patch Tuesday in the cumulative updates for IE8, perhaps it will be fixed very soon!

That's just a normal favourite surely? The item I was talking about is the "Windows Update" item in the drop-down when you select "Tools" on IE8's toolbar. As far as I know, that cannot be changed to point anywhere else.

Well the link on IE8's Tools menu has always worked until very recently, redirecting to Microsoft Update for me, and why they would stop it working if the facility is still available is a bit of a mystery as far as I'm concerned. I suspect it's just an accidental breakage of the redirection, and I hope they will fix it. A shame that the link isn't openly in the registry to be changed, as the address of the help links on the Windows Event Viewer entries is.

I'm not disputing that .NET 2.0 SP2 is now part of .NET 3.5's installation, indeed it may now not be possible to get .NET 2.0 SP2 as a standalone installation, but the installation file for KB4020517 clearly says even in its file name that it's for .NET 2.0 SP2, and nothing to do with .NET 3.5. So, it's the redirect on http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com that is malfunctioning, much as the redirect on the further help file links on the Windows Event Viewer entries is also malfunctioning. Microsoft really don't know what they're doing in these areas nowadays do they! Hopefully it will be fixed, but I'm not holding my breath!

@heinoganda I realise that .NET 2.0 SP2 is included in the .NET 3.5 installation, but the install of KB4020517 all through its installation routine said it was updating .NET 2.0 SP2, not .NET 3.5, so I think it should be flagged as being an update for .NET 2.0 SP2, not .NET 3.5. There may be people with .NET 2.0 SP2 installed, but not .NET 3.5, who don't need .NET 3.5 so have never installed it, and it should be clear that that update applies to them. The only updates I have listed in Add/Remove Programs that specifically say they are for .NET 3.5 SP1 are KB2736416 KB953595 KB2604111 KB963707 KB958484 KB2840629 and KB2861697. Is that correct? Cheers, Dave.

Thanks Den! I already had a shortcut that just ran wupdmgr.exe, but I'll change it so it runs that command, and hopefully it will then keep working! A bit annoying that the embedded link in IE8 no longer works though, but as you say it may just be a temporary glitch.

Can the IE8 toolbar link be modified? I can't see it obviously in the registry anywhere. I've just tried it on my netbook, and that's showing the "you must update your browser to use this site" message as well as the emoji.

Whew, thank goodness for that! I don't think this is anything to do with Firefox versions. Your link does indeed still work when opened in IE8. It's the "Windows Update" link on IE8's toolbar under "Tools" that isn't now working. Let's hope it's just temporary as you say.

Er, possible slight problem here guys! Windows Update is no longer working for me. I'm just getting redirected to a help page which is just showing an emoji in Internet Explorer 8. If I go to the same address in Firefox, I'm just getting the standard FAQ page for Windows Updates. Anyone else seeing this? Has Windows Update now finally been blocked to us?

Both updates installed fine, although they both took ages to do so. Do we know if they supersede any previous updates whose installation files can now be deleted? KB4020517 is for .NET 2.0 SP2 BTW, not for .NET 3.5. I haven't seen an update for .NET 3.5 for ages.

I'm pretty sure that .NET is an intrinsic component of later Windows versions, and cannot be removed, but on XP you don't need to have it installed at all unless you have applications that use it. If you do use it (and I'm not sure of any easy way to tell if you do!) then you should update it for security.

I'm on the ESR channel, and I just manually updated (with some trepidation!) from 52.1.0 to 52.1.1. Touch wood, everything still seems to be fine, well YouTube is still working as before anyway!

Thanks. So you sometimes have the message and sometimes not? That's very strange. I'm going to wait until after patch Tuesday next week to see if it's a temporary glitch that will be fixed then, but I'm not holding out too much hope! I guess that this isn't being seen commonly, or more people would have said so. The strange thing is that I can't see any disabled options on the pages with the message, and I'm not aware of any being missing either.

Not directly relevant to Windows updates, but I just thought I'd mention for those still using it that there was another update for Adobe Reader 11 a few weeks ago, to version 11.0.20. You can get it here if you want it.

OK, I removed the entire "WindowsUpdate" key, along with its subkeys of course. Unfortunately this has made no difference, even after several reboots, the red message is still there. Strangely, although I have tried changing the Windows Update settings, the key has not been restored. Is it something to do with Group Policy, which I don't use and have disabled? Do you think I should restore the key, or is it something that does not matter?

I haven't, but I will! How far back should I delete? Presumably not just the DWORD entry. Should I delete the whole "WindowsUpdate" key, as it has no other entries under it?

I seem to remember that this has happened before, probably towards the end of last year, where there were a couple of versions of the PPAPI plugin actually released that did not work properly, even in some current versions of Chromium-based browsers. It's probably a regression that's slipped in, and this time it hopefully will be addressed before the release.

Sorry for the delay in responding. It does exist, and contains a single DWORD entry "NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers" which is set to 0. Since I last posted here, I've found some more people asking about this on the MS help forums, but no answer as yet.

Just bumping this to say I've found a fix, or at least a workaround. If you browse to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\SystemData\S-1-5-18\ReadOnly\LockScreen_P\ there you will find the cave picture lurking. I replaced it with another jpg image, keeping the same file name, and now I have that on the default lock screen. How long this will "stick" for I have no idea, but it's been OK for several days now. Hope this helps anyone in the future wanting to change this, as the change facility still doesn't work in version 1703 of Windows 10 Pro, and there are stories of it not even working properly in the Enterprise version, which it is supposed to do!

I'm pretty sure that the first method no longer works. The last version I had working like that was 15.4.22, later versions won't now run properly, even with the compatibility mode set, and just throw error messages.

Unfortunately, in my experience the Dropbox server will block access if it detects what it considers to be an out of date version.

Well I certainly haven't applied any group policies. How would you disable "Delivery Optimization"? I will check that out, although I haven't done it knowingly.

Opera 12.02 is the last version that works on Windows 98SE, even with KernelEx.

Thanks, that's interesting that you're seeing the same thing on a clean install! I suspect the notice appeared on mine after the first update was applied, which was a Flash Player update. It definitely wasn't there straight away. I'm just interested to know if everyone is seeing this, and what exactly is supposedly being "hidden" on the page! I am of course an administrator on the system, so I can't imagine why anything would be hidden or disabled on Windows Update. Searching online about this brings up virtually nothing, the only other references to that notice seem to apply to the customisation page where you change things like the lock screen image, where it appears if you have things disabled using Group Policy settings. I couldn't find any references to it appearing on the Windows Update page.