Yeehaw, my months-old-problem with Windows XP updates refusing to install is now solved! It only took eight hours with two different levels of Windows technicians to fix the issue yesterday. My computer must have been a mess. However, thanks to Priya and especially Ronnie I am now a happy camper with Service Pack 3 installed after the techs first cleaned up the mess that was preventing the install of SP2 updates.
Poor Priya. She tried her best for two hours, but then had to upgrade me to Ronnie, a senior service technician. At about the four hour point with Ronnie, I was losing hope that my issue could be resolved without a reformat. Everything reached a happy conclusion 30 minutes before Ronnie’s shift ended. All in all, a satisfactory result to a day packed full of energy depletion. Yes, I am still sick, feeling quite groggy and dizzy, so I couldn’t write yesterday, anyway. Might as well sit at the computer for eight hours while it gets fixed. Ronnie began communicating with me through Notepad while he fixed the issues from his end, so I managed to clean up all the mail and other various household thingies that had accumulated in my absence. My desk is still a mess, however. Grocery shopping and bill payments today, then I’ll tackle the desk tomorrow. I’ll also start uploading conference pics tomorrow plus give my impressions of conference along the way. Yes, I know I’m late doing so, but it can’t be helped. I must regain some semblance of health.
I’m sitting here wondering why it took so long to fix my computer. I’ve never had a problem installing updates until this spring. However, I think I know what happened. One Friday night in the spring, around the time SP3 came out for Windows XP, my Norton’s was running and doing its thing while I was either checking email or working in Word. My Liege was downstairs working on his laptop and told me that some huge update was coming in. Was it coming in on my end as well? I don’t know, but whatever was going on, my computer suffered a major crash. I had to use Norton GoBack to save it. Now, I didn’t immediately notice that I was having problems with the automatic updates, so I can’t say for certain that the problems were related to this crash. However, I have heard Norton can bungle the works in some ways (and of course I heard this right after renewing my annual subscription), so I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it had a hand in things. I still think it’s very strange that I could install Office and Outlook updates (I don’t use Outlook, but the updates come anyway), but not Windows updates. Whatever, the issue is now resolved, and I have been assured it will not (um, should not) occur again. We shall see. Cross your fingers for me!
Oh, a note to anyone dealing with Microsoft XP SP3 tech support. The telephone tech support for SP3 issues is free until April 2009, so if you’re having problems, take advantage of it like I did. I now very much regret that I WASTED (yes, in capital letters) at least 4 weeks trying to fix the problems through email support. My email support person vanished a few weeks before National, and I was too busy writing to deal with the problem then. I have no idea where she went. My case was not passed to a new tech, my emails just suddenly started bouncing and then began going unanswered. My tech must have gone on extended vacation. Using the telephone support was MUCH more satisfactory.