XP updates never update

[enderlicious]

I've got a bum update.

It says, turn off and install updates. I say fine. It says installing 1 of 1... don't turn off your computer - and stays that way for 8, 10 and 12 hours (for the first three times I tried it). I thought after yanking the power the first time, that it might actually install the second or third time around, but it appears that it is not going to ever actually install.

How can I remove this update, and re-download it to try it again? Or... is there another solution?

I'd like to turn off my computer and have it go off. I'd also kinda prefer to be able to install new updates, when they come around, instead of skipping any updates from now on.

 

[DelJo63]

Is it stuck Creating a Restore point or after that comes the Download then the Install.

Which KB is being attempted?

 

[enderlicious]

I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.
I have automatic updates turned to the automatically download for me, but let me choose when to install them. That's about all I know about what it's doing with the updates, except it usually says, 'There are updates waiting', and sometimes when I go tolog off, instead of 'turn off' it says 'install updates and turn off' with an option to just 'turn off'.
Where would I find the information you're looking for?

 

[enderlicious]

Alright, I found out a couple of things. Firefox said it was saving things into my F: partition, went to double check, and found out that it wasn't actually saving. So, I rebooted. Still not actually downloading, even though it was giving me a folder selection screen. Then I tried the updates from a manual button on the taskbar (could find a way to do it from the control panel), got a listing of two different updates it wanted to do. Tried one, it failed. Tried the other one, and it gave me licensing terms. Tried it, and it stalled. Canceled it (whoops, appears you can't try it again if you cancel it). Read the license, went to the webpage it said had instructions to turn off internet reporting (of course, being MS it didn't actually have any instructions that I saw to do that). But, reading thru those, it said that it would install a randomly named folder on C: for checking for malware... Hmm. Remembered that when firefox was giving me the save file dialog, it wasn't remembering when I told it to use a new destination folder. Got thinking, and looked at my C: drive. Chock full. Deleted out 122M, and tried installing the first update that failed. It ate all that space and stopped halfway. Checked C: again, 64K available. Tried diskcleanup. Very little found that would help. Went looking in programs and found some ie8updates - I never use ie, so deleted those. Not sure I wish to continue with this update, as I'm not sure how much space it's going to eat... any idea if it's just temporarily using the space, and will free it later, or not? And/or how much space it might want to eat?

 

[DelJo63]

Run the cleanup from an admin account;
in a command prompt enter

runas /user:administrator cleanmgr​

 

[enderlicious]

Tried that. I think I read [somethingsomething Failure something] before the window flashed off my screen. It did prompt for a admin password...

What was that s'posed to be doing for me?