Win XP reinstall - help needed updating

[oli8925]

Hello all,

I've recently taken over my Mum's old Dell laptop that was so slow it was unusable. I've reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled XP Home SP2 using the reinstall disc that came with the computer and the device drivers. It starts up perfectly and is now very quick as Windows is completely bare of programs, however is obviously out of date and requires the updates and Windows add-ons to run programs properly.

Windows update will not work no matter what I try, it gives the error code 0x80244019 and says the website has encountered a problem and cannot display the page. Every support.microsoft.com or Microsoft download page, such as for MRST, crashes.

Any help appreciated as I don't know what to do now.

Thanks in advance,
Oli

 

[mailpup]

See if this helps: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896226

 

[oli8925]

I've disabled firewall and all other security that I know of that might get in the way, still no luck. I can't open the page on the laptop in question due to the issue with the support pages crashing.

I'm trying to manually install important updates but first have to install IE8, which is providing problems of it's own, but think I've got there now.

 

[mailpup]

I ran into a similar problem myself recently after reinstalling XP Home SP2. After installing SP3 that problem went away and I was able to get to the Windows Update page and start installing updates. If you continue to have trouble with Windows Update, try going to MS, download and install SP3.

 

[oli8925]

That's what I've just done, had to manually download a fair few background programs first but eventually got SP3 and it seems to be working now. 3/4 way through installing the updates. Thanks