Grayed-out "View Installation History"

I have successfully installed XP SP2, and I successfully did an
update check (nothing required) later. One link is the one in the
Start menu: "%SystemRoot%\system32\wupdmgr.exe".

A friend asked yesterday if I had installed a certain hardware
driver update via Windows Update. I went to the updates, I found
"View Installation History" grayed out, along with the "[Error
number: 0x8DDD0018] Windows Update cannot continue because a
required service application is disabled."

It seems unlikely that "View Installation History" would have been
disabled intentionally, along with "Settings" and "Restore Hidden
Updates", just because I might not have "Background Intelligent
Transfer Service" enabled.

So I expect this is a temporary situation that developed in the busy
downloading season, and is not an intentional coercion to enable
BITS. Would that be a correct assumption? Nothing time-critical
here for me.

In microsoft.public.windowsupdate, Cal Learner wrote:

>
>I have successfully installed XP SP2, and I successfully did an
>update check (nothing required) later. One link is the one in the
>Start menu: "%SystemRoot%\system32\wupdmgr.exe".
>
>A friend asked yesterday if I had installed a certain hardware
>driver update via Windows Update. I went to the updates, I found
>"View Installation History" grayed out, along with the "[Error
>number: 0x8DDD0018] Windows Update cannot continue because a
>required service application is disabled."
>
>It seems unlikely that "View Installation History" would have been
>disabled intentionally, along with "Settings" and "Restore Hidden
>Updates", just because I might not have "Background Intelligent
>Transfer Service" enabled.
>
>So I expect this is a temporary situation that developed in the busy
>downloading season, and is not an intentional coercion to enable
>BITS. Would that be a correct assumption? Nothing time-critical
>here for me.
>

That would be Windows Update that I am asking about.