Windows Vista Help! Multiple problems! Explorer, Firewall, Sleeping

[ktadie]

The most important and most problematic is my problem with Vista Updates.
I have asked for help at so many places, and hopefully you guys can help me out.
This is basicly just copy + paste from my first post.

hey there guys, this is the first time i have problems with the windows vista updates on my vista ultimate laptop.

i recently downloaded 3 updates;
1)Security Update for Windows Vista (KB946456)
2)Update for Windows Mail Junk E-mail filter (February 2008) (KB905866)
3) Update for Windows Vista (KB943899)

i dont care about the email update, since i use gmail, and not the windows outlook email service. however, the two others look important.

the other day i had just downloaded those updates, together with a big update for my security program Bitdefender. I opend windows update to "install updates" and it started to install the first one. however, i saw that i needed to reboot my laptop for the bitdefender and then i thought it would be more practical if i chose to switch of my laptop, but installing the updates after it has logged off and everything, and then shuts down. "Installs updates and then shuts down your computer" <-- from start menu.

so i clicked this, but then tried to cancell the other updates which i had going on from the windows update window. i really cant tell if it stopped probaly, cos then my computer shut down. and as good as i recall, it did install them on the windows closing screen.

when i start up again, i can see that these updates didnt install, and down at my icon bar (right buttom cornor) i can see the update icon and it says "New updates are availible" when i press this i get to the windows update again and it asks for me to isntall the updates. well they dont and give error:

80070002 and 8007371B (i assume that this isnt important, since when i press it it dosnt give me any help link)
so i press "Get Help" for the first error. it suggests 3 things.

1) stop windows update.. i did that and it didnt work.
2) delete temporary update files. i tried this, from both (which the help guide explains) DataStore folder, and the Download folder which is found at c/windows/SoftwareDistribution. i have to delete everything in the DataStore folder and the Download folder, but when ever i try to delete them, it says that i cant because those files/folders are being used by another program.

so i close everything to do with the update, task manager -> proccesses -> "wuaclt.exe" end it, i try deleting agian and it still dosnt work. however when ever i end that proccess, the icon dissapears but seconds afterwards it appears again. meaning that it opens again.

i also tried switching the scedual to when my laptop should look for updates/install them, to a differnt time and day. still didnt work confused.gif

3) this was the last suggestion, and it asks to restart the windows update.
"You must be logged on as an administrator to perform these steps.

Click to open Administrative Tools.

Double-click Services. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

Right-click the Windows Update service, and then click Restart."

i did this, hasnt worked either


any suggestions guys? confused.gif this is really bugging me and i feel alitle insecure without the latest updates. btw, i have installed and downloaded updates since i got this laptop (july 07) with no problems...

I have phoned Microsoft
support line, and have a bunch of email conversations
with them. In the end, one of them told me that I should
reformat.. I mean, COME ON? Reformat, because of 4 updates?
argh.. this is really depressing, because i can link these update
problems to recent security updates that I have just discovered.

These problem with the updates, especialy the very important security update, has messed up my firewall settings. I have tried 3 different firewalls (Zone alarm, Eset Nod and now Comodo) and none work. The only firewall that works is the Windows Firewall. Ontop of that, my sidebar has mysteriously dissapeared lol.
I have contacted the Eset NOD support team about it, and they are puzzled..

And now, my second problem,

My laptop strangly freezes, so I have to restart it. It happens when
I have no active program running (i.e. music playing, a game, downloading)
and isntead of going from my screen saver to standby/sleep, it freezes.
What happens is that the mouse stops to work, my external Hard drive
displays that it has been disconnected from my laptop. The power switch
and power indicator (showing that the computer is on and "active") lights,
and the light for the shortcuts, cpu usage and everything is on.. But, it dosn't
respond to anything that I try to do with it, from the keyboard. F2 spam, Ctrl, Alt Dlt,
etc. dosn't work. This results into me having to manually switch it off, and turn it
back on...

Now why is this happening? :S
One thing that might be affecting it is that I recently (well a month ago) got a new driver
for my laptop's nvidia card. it is the 174.93 ..

My laptop spec's are:
Windows Vista Ultimate
t7100 Duo 1.8Ghz
nVidia 8600
2gig Ram.

This is getting REALLY annoying.. Any suggestiongs? ;p

and then lastly, for some weird reason,
when ever i open MY computer, Windows Explorer stops working and restarts...
Weird =_o

Thanks alot in advanced.

Lol, one more problem.. I recently downloaded a HUGE iso file (7gigs) with like 70 differnt zip files.
I downloaded it straight to my external harddrive because my D drive and C drive are full. However,
when i try to unzip them all together, it says that I cannot, because the format of my external hardrive
is NTS or something and that it cannot support files over 4 gigs.. now that is also, very depressing
since my external harddrive is to all my big files and such.. ugh.

 

[Deleted member 38767]

For the first problem: If I were you first thing I would do is system restor. Vista by defaault makes a restor point befor installing updates. I don't remember where exactly this function was located in the Control Panel, but you can start it if you have a bootable Vista disc.

For the laptop I realy don't know. It could be the drivers. Someone else will have to help you for that.

As for the extHDD: most likely it is formated in FAT32 wich doesn't support files larger than 4GB or so. If you need to use it for large files reformat it to NTFS.

 

[ktadie]

For the first problem: If I were you first thing I would do is system restor. Vista by defaault makes a restor point befor installing updates. I don't remember where exactly this function was located in the Control Panel, but you can start it if you have a bootable Vista disc.

For the laptop I realy don't know. It could be the drivers. Someone else will have to help you for that.

As for the extHDD: most likely it is formated in FAT32 wich doesn't support files larger than 4GB or so. If you need to use it for large files reformat it to NTFS.

THe problem is that I don't have a vista cd. my laptop had it pre-installed ;p
and, reformating my extHDD is kinda out of question, I have over 200gigs of movies, music and files on it :S:S