Solved: Windows Update stopped working on Windows XP

I have been bothered by the lack of updates on a Windows XP SP3 virtual machine I have.

Today I decided to dig into the problem, and after a long, long while I got it to work.

One of the clues was following message on windowsupdate.log (just Start->Run and type windowsupdate.log - very useful)
FATAL: Service 7971F918-A847-4430-9279-4A52D1EFE18D requested, but it is expired

I'm still not sure WHICH of the many fixes I tried worked, but what I did that seems more likely:
1) Downloaded the latest version of Windows Update agent from Microsoft (it is in the Resolution section, way down) and installed it.
2) Went into Control Panel, Security Center, click on Automatic Update (the link on the bottom), chose Turn off Automatic Updates, and clicked on Apply. Then clicked on Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them and on Apply.

At this point, it immediately started to download updates (34 - it had been a while). Please note that restarting the service, forcing a detectnow, or restarting the computer had no effect - it still failed to start. It only started when I did step 2.



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