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After upgrading computers from Windows Home to Professional  I noticed that the Windows Update fails to install the patches it downloads. This has happened on every machine I have done it on. I download all updates, including driver updates, and it says "failed to install updates". Has anyone come across this problem? Thanks.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555461

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822798

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll give these a try.

Not a problem. It has happend to be so I did what the KB told me to do and it worked,

Just had the same problem after installing SP3 on a new clean install of XP Pro-SP2.  Found this and it worked like a charm:
 

Problem:

Installed the official SP3 on a clean installation before programs. It immediately stopped the Windows update site from working any further - any attempted installations failed, so I couldn't update Office etc after loading them. Did a system restore to remove SP3 and all was fine again. Any thoughts? [note this can be traced to a silent update of Windows Update from Microsoft predating SP3 that failed to register, leaving many in the lurch.  Apparently Microsoft failed to make the same frigging adjustment in the script to register it when they created SP3.  So I am guessing if you install SP3 on a currently undated system it works fine, but a new clean install and bammo, 'thank you Microsoft!']

Cause & Solution:

from Ziggy:

I had the same problem, but I eventually found a solution.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 installs a new version of Windows Update, but it forgets to register it.

try the following:

Log on as an administrator, and run cmd.exe, and issue the following commands:

> net stop wuauserv

> cd\windows\system32

> regsvr32 wups2.dll

> net start wuauserv

and try again.