Automatic update Windows XP fails

Hi,



At home I have two computers running Windows XP SP2 (one home edition
and one Media Center Edition).

On both computers Automatic update is activated, but the automatic
update functions fails at both computers.



For a few seconds the shield of the update-function appears but no
update are downloaded and installed. When manually visiting the Windows
update site for both computers there are essential updates listed.
Manually downloading these essential updates is possible and successful.



I checked the status of the background intelligent transfer service
(BITS, in my Dutch versions "Intelligente achtergrondoverdrachtservice"
that is mentioned often related to this problem. On the home edition
machine it was started and the start-up type was automatic. On the MCE
machine it was started but the start-up type was set to manual. I
switched it to automatic. But the automatic update still does not work.
After a few reboots the start-up type of BITS on the MCE machine was
back to manual.



What can I do to get my computers update the Windows XP automatically in
stead of frequently visiting the Windows update site and activating the
updates manually?



Regards,

Gerrit Veeninga

Jerry <> wrote:

> My computer is doing the same thing. I have no problem updating
> manually, but the autoupdate does not seem to work. Is there a time
> span in which this is to work. I have the default time of 3 am, and
> my computer is on at that time. Since the last updates were posted
> last Tuesday, I waited until Wednesday night to see if they would be
> detected. They were not.

Auto-update is not necessarily allowed to download new updates as soon as
they become available. The Automatic Update agent in your PC might be told
by the update server "go back to sleep, I'm too busy" (this is called
"regulation" in the log). I have know it take up to a week for Automatic
Updates in one or two PCs to be allowed to start the update process. So
please be patient before giving up on Automatic Updates.

If you want to check, look in C:\WINDOWS\WindowsUpdate.log where you should
see reasons given why Automatic Updates is deferred each night. If you see
it was deferred because of "regulation", this is the servers telling y our
PC to back off until the servers are less busy.

--
Robin Walker [MVP Networking]

Robin Walker [MVP] wrote:
> Jerry <> wrote:
>
>> My computer is doing the same thing. I have no problem updating
>> manually, but the autoupdate does not seem to work. Is there a time
>> span in which this is to work. I have the default time of 3 am, and
>> my computer is on at that time. Since the last updates were posted
>> last Tuesday, I waited until Wednesday night to see if they would be
>> detected. They were not.
>
> Auto-update is not necessarily allowed to download new updates as
> soon as they become available. The Automatic Update agent in your PC
> might be told by the update server "go back to sleep, I'm too busy"
> (this is called "regulation" in the log). I have know it take up to
> a week for Automatic Updates in one or two PCs to be allowed to start
> the update process. So please be patient before giving up on
> Automatic Updates.
> If you want to check, look in C:\WINDOWS\WindowsUpdate.log where you
> should see reasons given why Automatic Updates is deferred each
> night. If you see it was deferred because of "regulation", this is
> the servers telling y our PC to back off until the servers are less
> busy.

Thnx, I checked my windowsupdate.log a saw that "regulation" was the
reason my automatic updates failed. So after all there is nothng to be
worried about.

Regards

Gerrit.

Thanks Robin. I found the "regulation" message many times in my log. I
will watch this for future updates and will be more patient in the future.

"Robin Walker [MVP]" <> wrote in message
news:%...
> Jerry <> wrote:
>
>> My computer is doing the same thing. I have no problem updating
>> manually, but the autoupdate does not seem to work. Is there a time
>> span in which this is to work. I have the default time of 3 am, and
>> my computer is on at that time. Since the last updates were posted
>> last Tuesday, I waited until Wednesday night to see if they would be
>> detected. They were not.
>
> Auto-update is not necessarily allowed to download new updates as soon as
> they become available. The Automatic Update agent in your PC might be told
> by the update server "go back to sleep, I'm too busy" (this is called
> "regulation" in the log). I have know it take up to a week for Automatic
> Updates in one or two PCs to be allowed to start the update process. So
> please be patient before giving up on Automatic Updates.
>
> If you want to check, look in C:\WINDOWS\WindowsUpdate.log where you
> should see reasons given why Automatic Updates is deferred each night. If
> you see it was deferred because of "regulation", this is the servers
> telling y our PC to back off until the servers are less busy.
>
> --
> Robin Walker [MVP Networking]
>
>