Windows XP - Forcing Windows Update when faced with Error number: 0x80244019, My solution.

This should be of interest to anyone who has recently reinstalled Windows XP and is trying to use the Windows Update service but having problems.
I have done this a few times in recent months and my method works reliably. If it works for you then please leave a comment.You will need an original XP Installation CD and a valid genuine KEY to go with it.

I had an old slow laptop (that is not compatible with windows 7 and definitely not Windows 8) and wanted to reformat the hard disk and install a fresh copy of Windows XP so it would run faster. I had an original Windows XP Home edition CD with the KEY.
During the XP Setup process I formatted the hard disk and installed XP Home, It was XP SP2 so was going to need lots of updates.
So I ran Internet Explorer and went to the "Tools" drop-down menu and clicked on "Windows Update"
I clicked yes to install the Active-X plug in and then clicked the Express button, after a few seconds
it showed the following error message :

[Error number: 0x80244019]

Windows XP failing on Windows Update with Error number: 0x80244019

This is a common problem people get when trying to install old operating systems like this.

In order to force Windows XP to update you need to do the following :

1) Click on this link to download the updater from Microsoft's website :
go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=91237

The file it downloads is "windowsupdateagent30-x86.exe"

2) Select RUN (or save it and run it yourself)

3) Once installed, reboot the PC and run Internet Explorer again and as before select "Windows Update"

Click the Express button to check for updates.

4) Click Express button again, this time it should find some updates.
One update is a newer version of "windows updater 3.1" and another of these updates is the "Genuine Windows Advantage" so make sure you have used a valid genuine key otherwise you will not be able to update it.

5) Once its installed these updates, reboot the PC

6) Run Internet Explorer again and go to the "Tools" drop-down menu and click on "Windows Update"
And then Express again, now it should find lots of updates in this example it has found 72 Windows Updates.

Windows Update now working fine.

You can now download and install these, This will continue for a while each time rebooting and then going to update again until all the updates have been installed. This process can take a while as Service Pack 3 has to be installed. I think it installed well over 200 updates by the time it had finished.



Hopefully my solution to "Windows not updating" will have been resolved by this.
Leave a comment if it has fixed it for you.

Thanks
Andy

An important choice to make: your browser, New update from Microsoft KB976002 is not very user friendly

Today a new Windows Update has been installed (KB976002)  which after booting up your PC will show a screen with the title..

"An important choice to make: your browser".
The window has a title of "Information Regarding Web Browsers".

It has an OK button to click on, if you click that then it shows the screen I have pasted in here, it also shows this if you click on the close button.
It shows a random selection of 9 choices of browsers.
Below each one are two buttons labelled "Install" and "Tell me more".
Apparently this update is something to do with Microsoft having to make people aware that they do have a choice as regards which web browser they wish to use, so the “Web browser choice screen” has been added to Internet Explorer users in Europe, its required by the European Commission.
This windows update is being rolled out in March 2010. So if you have not seen this yet then you will very soon (unless you have turned off Windows updates).

I think this browser choice screen is very badly thought out because there is NO option to click "I am happy to stay with my current browser choice, Ignore and don't remind of this again".
On my PC I have the latest versions IE8, Firefox, Opera and Chrome already installed yet as you can see the screen that shows does not say "Already installed" below those browsers.
Surely this is a fundamental error in the layout of this screen as its not very obvious what you need to do to ignore this Browser Choice screen.

If you click on the "Select Later" button then this just hides the Browser Choice window until you reboot next time.

On my Windows 7 machine, when you reboot after this update has installed you will notice that the shortcut to IE on your Quick launch taskbar has gone! I bet lots of people are going to google "My Internet Explorer icon has vanished on Windows 7" after this windows update has gone on.
You will notice as well as the IE8 icon vanishing from your quick launch bar that you now have a new icon on the desktop called "Browser Choice", if you run that then you will get the browser choice window.
I guess the idea of this is to force you to choose IE over other available browsers.

On my XP SP3 machines , when you reboot after this update has been installed it actually runs the Browser choice window without any interaction.

So what do you need to do?
Windows XP:
Well if you are happy with what you already use and want to keep things as they were simply click OK on the first screen then close the second screen. Now delete the Browser Choice icon from your desktop.
Reboot and thats it back to normal. It won't bother asking you ever again.

Windows 7:
Well if you are happy with what you already use and want to keep things as they were simply click OK on the first screen.
If you want to keep Internet Explorer goto the task bar and right click on Internet explorer and select "Pin to Task bar" then close the second screen. Now delete the Browser Choice icon from your desktop.
Reboot and thats it back to normal.
I do not have Vista any more so not sure how that behaves, perhaps someone can post a comment to say if its the same as Windows 7.

Hope this helps those people out there who are not sure.

The screen that shows when you click the OK button on the first screen takes you to this page :
http://www.browserchoice.eu/BrowserChoice/browserchoice_en.htm

For information about this Windows update :
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=976002

There is also a shorcut icon on the desktop which runs :
C:\WINDOWS\system32\browserchoice.exe

If you goto Start - Run and type msconfig and then click on the startup tab you can see its set to run browserchoice every time your computer starts up.


One thing I also don't understand is the selection of browsers its has to offer, Everyone I'm sure will know all of the popular ones such as Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome but also listed are several browsers that I have never heard of, also some that have not been updated for ages such as Maxthon which seems to have been abandoned back in 2008.
As a web designer I have kept en eye on what browsers are popular as things change over the years. There is an upto date table month by month which shows which browsers are popular. See this here :
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
As you can see people KNOW they have a choice of web browser with Firefox being a clear winner these days.
People that only use Internet Explorer are most likely people that don't even know that there are different browsers available, so to suddenly offer a bewilldering range of browsers to these people is going to cause trouble.

I dare say in the days to follow this update will cause lots of chaos with PC users not knowing what to do.

Andy