Edit/modify installation history?

I want to know if there's a way to change the contents of
my Windows Update installation history list by hand.
Specifically, I want to prune out update attempts
marked "Failed" from broken downloads (but succeeded on
later attempts) -- I just want to "clean" the list itself,
getting those bad updates out only while leaving
everything else alone.

Is this possible to do? If it involves editing one or
more files and/or registry entries, which ones and how?
(BTW, I'm running Windows 2000 w/SP4.)

Thx in advance.

On Mon, 6 Sep 2004 23:15:54 -0700, "hoffman391"
<> wrote:

>I want to know if there's a way to change the contents of
>my Windows Update installation history list by hand.

To make any changes you will have to manually edit the "iuhist.xml" file. The
"iuhist.xml" file is located in "C:\Program Files\WindowsUpdate\V4" on my system
(Win98SE). You may have to search for it on yours. Be sure the SHOW ALL HIDDEN
FILES/FOLDERS options are enabled.
XML is similar to HTML. Any standard editor, including Notepad, should be able
to handle editing it as a plain text file. Basically, all the information for
each individual listing is contained between its <itemStatus> and </itemStatus>
tags. The <itemStatus> tag also contains namespace and timestamp information,
so it actually looks like this:

<itemStatus xmlns="" timestamp="2004-04-29T11:22:36">

For each item you want to remove you delete everything inbetween its opening
and closing "itemStatus" tags, including the tags themselves. For example:

<itemStatus xmlns="" timestamp="2004-04-29T11:22:36">
#Lots of tags and information for one update download listing here#
</itemStatus>

If you double-click the file and open it in your browser first you'll more
easily see the layout/formatting of the file and it'll make a lot more sense;
it'll sure make locating and editing what you want to remove a lot easier.
View your edited file in your browser (frequently) to see if you made any
errors before replacing the original file with it.

!! BE SURE YOU MAKE A COPY/BACKUP OF THE FILE BEFORE DOING ANY EDITING !!

--
dak