This is for anyone using XP SP3 who's seen Updates switched off and cannot
turn the service back on - probably as a result of trojans Vundo and/or
Conhook. I was able to isolate things relatively easily because the machine
affected was a brand-new Tosh laptop with a Vista->XP recovery installation.
I started to get a bunch of ad pop-ups after Day 1. Thinking I should look
for an MS security fix first, I tried doing an update and saw that it was
switched off. I couldn't re-start it and enabling & restarting AU/BITS in
Services did nothing either. My heart sank at the thought of registry-heavy
stuff. I did this and it worked:
1. Install Windows Defender
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...en&mg_id=10134
2. After installation, Defender would not update for the same reason as the
Windows updates. You do need the latest Defender updates. Therefore, I
manually updated using the link provided
http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/ADL.aspx and ran the 32-bit version
which applied to me (the 64-bit version is there as well).
3. I then let Defender scan and it found the aforementioned trojans. I let
the program remove them (four in all).
After restarting, the trojans, add-ons and pop-ups disappeared and Automatic
Updates were restored. I was genuinely surprised as I had only installed
Defender as a bit of extra security in the first instance of what I thought
would be a long-haul process.
I accept that this isn't a particularly techie solution (well, on the
surface anyway) and also relies on Windows Defender - but it worked for my
particular situation and it is free. Even if it doesn't cure everyone's
Update issues referred to in this discussion/thread, I don't think it'll do
any harm. Hope this is of some help.
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