I wish I knew why Windows Vista will not update itself.

J

johnnyb58

Member
This has been going on for 6 or 7 years and the only way I can update it is with Bit Defender. I was going to try another antivirus program, but then I can’t update.

I have two Vista computers and one has no problem updating. I’ve asked this before and only got recommendations to buy a new OS. I don’t want to buy a new OS without knowing the cause because it might be the same thing over again plus I have the full version of MS Office and do not want to upgrade.

Well I guess since I just purchased another year of Bit Defender I'm not in a hurry, it is puzzling.:confused:
 
Are you running Service pack 2? Very seldom update issues is with the antivirus program you use. Vista was just a poor OS to begin with. As many times as I've had to reinstall for my clients I've had lots of windows update issues. Usually you have to update original version to SP1 by downloading the update directly and then after installation, download and install SP2 and by that time windows updates works for the most part. Was never able to understand it.
 
It is Service pack 2 and the error reads

"windows could not search for new updates"
error code 80073712

I can't even do it manually because it spends a few minutes and then fails, but Bit Defender has no problem of doing it, So why can Bit Defender do it and not Windows?

it all started years ago when I got confused about a RAID Setting. I had two computers and one was setup with RAID 1. I don't remember what I was doing at the time but I was asked about the RAID Configuring and I said '1' when it was actually '0'

I immediately fixed it after the computer crashed, but have never been able to update since except with Bit defender.
 
Thanks John. I just installed and ran it. I think I've done that a couple of times before, but I noticed that this time the program itself was updated in October of 2014.

I see that I now have 1 Hotfix update from today but I know I'm missing 7-9 updates according to my other Vista computer that just updated this past week.

I tried manually running the windows update program after the Hotfix update and it goes through the motions while saying I have updates available, but can''t install them. There is no error message, just no updates installed.

Anyway it the same thing I've been going through for 7 years. I'm just going to install the new Bit Defender that I just bout and update through that. Maybe when this version expires I'll install Win7.
 
OK I haven’t used this vista computer since I started this thread and now the problem as gotten worst. Not only can’t Vista update itself, but Bit Defender can’t update the Vista either. I spent the entire last two days cleaning files along with the registry and I even tried defragging.

I did manage to get some of the updates and when I checked on what updates were successful, I found that MS Silverlight has failed every time. I’m not sure if I really need Silverlight and may delete it. I only use this computer to run model trains and to update software and decoders. I also use it to get trouble shooting info off the internet.

Anyway now that it’s too cold outside to do anything else, I want to start playing with my trains again and I don’t want to deal with these vista problems anymore. So I’m now looking into purchasing Win7

The computer is capable of running 64 bit and I read that some people are running their old train software on Win7 64 bit, but I’ll have to verify that to be sure there isn’t more that I have to do.

My question is that if I purchase a downloaded Win7 64 bit version, will there be any problems installing on a computer with OS problems already? I’m hoping that I don’t have to do a clean install because the model train software is really hard to install. If I do have to do a clean install, can I down load the Win7 onto a DVD before installing it?
 
If you buy Windows 7 don't do an upgrade install of 7 from Vista, boot off DVD, format the drive and install Windows 7 clean.

Generally speaking Windows 7 is fairly compatible. It ran most of the stuff Vista could run, in fact I may even say it was better at running older stuff than Vista was. If you get Pro or Ultimate you can use XP Mode with 7 which is basically a virtual machine of XP you download (it's free), but usually simply right clicking on the installer for the program or the executable file for it and running it in compatibly mode for XP SP3 works fine. If there are issues Windows 7 usually does it for you automatically.
 
Thanks spirit, I was afraid of that. I guess I'm going to have to do some research on how to save all my programs. I've never had much luck in back up programs because there is always something important missed. The worst part is that many of my programs have a key code that only allows one install on one computer so I'm going to lose some programs.
 
johnnyb58 said:
Thanks spirit, I was afraid of that. I guess I'm going to have to do some research on how to save all my programs. I've never had much luck in back up programs because there is always something important missed. The worst part is that many of my programs have a key code that only allows one install on one computer so I'm going to lose some programs.
Click to expand...
You can use a key finder such as Licence Crawler to find the product keys for your software: http://www.klinzmann.name/licensecrawler.htm

That will tell you the keys for the software you have installed on your PC. :)
 
johnnyb58 said:
Oh wow thanks I never heard of such a thing.
Click to expand...
Yeah they're handy in situations such as this! This is the best one I've found. A lot of them just find the keys for Windows and Office, but this one finds the key for just about everything! You can save the keys in a text document too which is nice.
 
I ran License Crawler and there were a lot of programs that i don't even know what they are. Not sure if maybe they were programs that I tried and removed, but the license was left behind.
 
johnnyb58 said:
I ran License Crawler and there were a lot of programs that i don't even know what they are. Not sure if maybe they were programs that I tried and removed, but the license was left behind.
Click to expand...
Maybe. Sometimes for Windows the product key is shown multiple times, eg sometimes it says the product key for Internet Explorer is the Windows product key.
 
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