SOLVED - UpdateCatalog issue - Not all Admin accounts are created equa

[w2k4eva]

I have come across an older system (vpr matrix 180R) that I am in the process of rehabilitating. It is presently running XP Home with SP3 and most official updates installed, plus some unofficial ones derived from PoS2009. (It is not using the registry hack.) It is not part of a network, just a standalone system. Being Home and not Pro, it has never been part of a domain.

It also has some user accounts "kenny" created 28 Nov 2002 2:50PM and Administrator created 28 Nov 2002 3:01PM. Checking Windows Update history shows that Service Pack 1 installed 06 Apr 2003 so the system must have originally shipped with plain XP; other files/folders are dated 29 May 2002 12:23AM which I think must have been the original install time. Farther down the list of update history, Service Pack 3 was installed on 8 Mar 2009 8:17PM by the previous owner. I am not the original owner, so after the system came to me I created another user account, "me" on 23 Jun 2014 2:01PM. All three of these are admin type accounts.

After applying some updates like the newer WU client I got Windows Update to work without issues. The Update Catalog, however, is not working for user "me"; it gives that notorious error message that userdata persistence needs to be enabled. The message is clearly wrong since that setting already IS enabled.

Googling turned up the usual stuff about how to set userdata persistence that was already set. The only other thing I found was KB909444 which had some mention of file and folder permissions. I did find that folder C:\windows\registration did not have Read and Traverse permissions for Everyone so I added that. The permissions along that path are now:

 

However it still gives user "me" that same message (even after several reboots). As an experiment I tried user "kenny" which was the old account, and that one just works! So the issue seems to be something about permissions that is different on the newer account, since both are supposedly admin type accounts. Are there any other folders, files or possibly registry keys that may have wrong permissions besides the ones listed in KB909444?

 

Edited September 21, 2015 by w2k4eva

[w2k4eva]

bump . . .   Surely someone else has seen this problem? Any ideas for how to solve it?

 

[w2k4eva]

Well, I finally solved it. Turns out there are TWO settings that needed to be enabled but the error message only mentioned one of them (userdata persistence). The other one is on the same property sheet - "Internet Options" -> Security tab -> Trusted Zone (assuming you have put the MS update website addresses in that zone), click Custom Level. Scroll to the section for ActiveX controls & plugins, find the one for "Binary & script behaviors", click Enable, then OK. Didn't even need to restart IE, just revisit the page and now it loads correctly.