Persistent Problem with MS Update

Have you ever gotten a Windows system that simply won't update? That is, it'll find all the updates it needs from Microsoft, but the updates won't do anything but fail. It's a bummer, because the normal reboot simply won't fix the problem. It turns out there is a solution. The problem appears to come from XP SP3, beauty, that. In any case, this should fix the problem: Run: REGSVR32 WUAPI.DLL REGSVR32 WUAUENG1.DLL REGSVR32 ATL.DLL REGSVR32 WUPS2.DLL REGSVR32 WUCLTUI.DLL REGSVR32 WUPS.DLL REGSVR32 WUWEB.DLL REGSVR32 WUAUENG.DLL

Windows Vista Look and Feel in XP

If you're interested in making your XP system look like Vista, there are a ton of resources out there. Why another one? Because I want to keep it simple. I found two resources that gave me the whiz-bang look and functionality without fiddling too much with lots of other apps. In short, I used what must be the gold standard, Vista Transformation Pack, along with TrueTransparency and the Microsoft Zune XP theme. With these three packages, I got more than I needed, and they're all free. I ended up unselecting the toolbar and start button transformations from the vista transformation pack; I don't care for the tool bar, and the Start Button just wasn't quite where I think it should be: you can't right-click on the icons, and there's just a bit missing. Still, it makes for a great user experience, without a lot of the Vista negatives.

Desktop Search for Windows x64

Windows released version 4 of its desktop search recently, and I must say that it (mostly) works well. With the Vista desktop, one simply can begin typing a search string at the start menu, and Windows will present the search results there as you type.

The problem: UNC indexing isn't apparently supported in the 64 bit environments, at least not with Server 2008, and the network shares I want to index are stored on Windows Server 2000 boxes: those won't run the new indexing tool.

So what to do?