WinXP hang during scan for windows update

[SmilingAndrew]

Hi,

My (brand new) XP system hangs really solidly about halfway through 'scanning for available updates' (frozen screen, no mouse motion, no response to repeated ctrl-alt-del, no 'caps lock' keyboard lamp on pressing caps lock).

I don't believe this is the same problem reported in other
threads (on the update process hanging at install), but have spent considerable time trying to solve it. Here are some
details:

I have a new PC with Win XP Pro SP1a.
After some frustration trying to solve this problem, I did
a clean windows installation to a freshly formatted disk.
From a previously prepared CD I applied the following
patches:
WindowsXP-KB826939-x86-ENU.exe (rollup of patches)
WindowsXP-KB824146-x86-ENU.exe (MS03-039)
WindowsXP-KB828035-x86-ENU.exe (MS03-043)
WindowsXP-KB828028-x86-ENU.exe
then installed ZoneAlarm, configured the modem and set up a diallup connection for my ISP.

Now I can:
* Connect to ISP via diallup
* Open IE6 SP1 (which had installed as part of XP) and
went to the microsoft windows update site
* Click on the link to scan for available updates

Scan commences, after a couple of minutes the progress
jumps to 33%, then the whole system simply freezes. No
mouse, no keyboard, no nothing - pressing the hardware
reset button is my only way out.

Same effect if I enable automatic checking for updates,
only in that case I have no control over when it happens!

The system seems stable enough if I don't go to the
windows update website.

HELP!!!

 

[linney]

http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/troubleshoot

Try this url and download any updates you require, save them to disk, then install them. (Manual search - no scan).

http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/catalog/en/default.asp

Click on Find updates for Microsoft Windows operating systems and select your operating system.

A list of some of the ones you might need -

Q832894 IE Cumulative for Feb.
Q826026 Windows Media
Q832483 MDAC

And look for the next Cumulative patch around March 10.