This isn't to address any specific problem, rather an information tip that would be useful for people doing multiple installs, or people who (like me) tend to reinstall regularly.
We all know that recently, WindowsUpdate has become increasingly intolerable to operate. In my case, it takes up to (and sometimes more than) a full hour to scan for necessary updates. So I quit that stage of it.
What I did was, when I have a successfully updated machine with WinXP installed, I make backups of the updates themselves. Here is a step-by-step guide of how I manage my network, workstations, and their respective updates.
Note that this may also work with Vista/7/8, but since I don't use those, I'm not sure. Try it and let me know.
Remember, this is on a fully updated and clean installation of Windows XP on a computer.
1) Windows Explorer. Navigate to C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download
2) Copy everything there to another drive (USB, DVD, what have ya) for safe storage.
Now, you may encounter some rather confusing things. Firstly, here's what one file or folder may look like:
2c95b28351986132d7f36dd28eece9b0
Don't panic. The folders, you can just go to .\2c95b28351986132d7f36dd28eece9b0\UPDATE\UPDATE.EXE and run the patch. But here's the trick with the files like that.
See, they don't have an extension. So Windows Explorer might show the following:
2c95b28351986132d7f36dd28eece9b0 File <date & time>
Now, these having no extension can be renamed easily. But there's only two types you need to worry about.
You can rename "2c95b28351986132d7f36dd28eece9b0" to "2c95b28351986132d7f36dd28eece9b0.EXE"
And chances are it'll run and install whatever patch it may be. Problem solved on that one.
However, if it throws an error, then it's not an EXE but a CAB file. Rename it to "2c95b28351986132d7f36dd28eece9b0.CAB" and you can simply explore inside it and extract the files to install them.
If it still won't function as either an EXE or a CAB, then it's not critical. License agreements or EULAs are generally the contents and are unimportant as an update, and you can remove it from your collection of updates.
Now, knowing all that, next time your fresh install of XP needs to visit WindowsUpdate, just run those updates manually. When you've gone down the hundreds of patches, WindowsUpdate will run normally. One of the updates fixes all the issues with visiting the site, but I don't know which one it is yet. Suffice it to say, when the XP operating system goes out to pasture, and they take down the website, you'll still have all the updates stored safely away - and you can continue to install the OS without problems. I still have all my updates for WinME/98(se)/95, NT4, NT3.5x/Win3.1x/2000 and XP.
Hope this helps someone.
We all know that recently, WindowsUpdate has become increasingly intolerable to operate. In my case, it takes up to (and sometimes more than) a full hour to scan for necessary updates. So I quit that stage of it.
What I did was, when I have a successfully updated machine with WinXP installed, I make backups of the updates themselves. Here is a step-by-step guide of how I manage my network, workstations, and their respective updates.
Note that this may also work with Vista/7/8, but since I don't use those, I'm not sure. Try it and let me know.
Remember, this is on a fully updated and clean installation of Windows XP on a computer.
1) Windows Explorer. Navigate to C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download
2) Copy everything there to another drive (USB, DVD, what have ya) for safe storage.
Now, you may encounter some rather confusing things. Firstly, here's what one file or folder may look like:
2c95b28351986132d7f36dd28eece9b0
Don't panic. The folders, you can just go to .\2c95b28351986132d7f36dd28eece9b0\UPDATE\UPDATE.EXE and run the patch. But here's the trick with the files like that.
See, they don't have an extension. So Windows Explorer might show the following:
2c95b28351986132d7f36dd28eece9b0 File <date & time>
Now, these having no extension can be renamed easily. But there's only two types you need to worry about.
You can rename "2c95b28351986132d7f36dd28eece9b0" to "2c95b28351986132d7f36dd28eece9b0.EXE"
And chances are it'll run and install whatever patch it may be. Problem solved on that one.
However, if it throws an error, then it's not an EXE but a CAB file. Rename it to "2c95b28351986132d7f36dd28eece9b0.CAB" and you can simply explore inside it and extract the files to install them.
If it still won't function as either an EXE or a CAB, then it's not critical. License agreements or EULAs are generally the contents and are unimportant as an update, and you can remove it from your collection of updates.
Now, knowing all that, next time your fresh install of XP needs to visit WindowsUpdate, just run those updates manually. When you've gone down the hundreds of patches, WindowsUpdate will run normally. One of the updates fixes all the issues with visiting the site, but I don't know which one it is yet. Suffice it to say, when the XP operating system goes out to pasture, and they take down the website, you'll still have all the updates stored safely away - and you can continue to install the OS without problems. I still have all my updates for WinME/98(se)/95, NT4, NT3.5x/Win3.1x/2000 and XP.
Hope this helps someone.