Yesterday I did a clean install of Windows XP Professional SP3 on a virtual machine for testing. First thing after installing is running Windows Update.

But the Windows Update web page did not load properly and only showed the error “The website has encountered a problem and cannot display the page you are trying to view. The options provided below might help you solve the problem.”. Of course, none of the options provided did say anything about this problem. The only help was an error code “Error number: 0x8024D001” up in the right corner of the page.

To solve this I had to make Windows XP download and install the first updates without using the web page, by installing it from the notification area.

Fist I had to make sure Windows Update was set to check for new updates automatically. This is selected in Automatic Updates in Control Panel.

To get Windows Update to check for updates quicker i started a command prompt and typed:

C:>wuauclt /detectnow

That made the notification balloon with “Updates are ready for your computer.” popup after less than a minute. This made it possible to install the first update without using the web page.

When that was done, and the computer was rebooted once (or twice) the Windows Update web page worked again. And then that Windows Update wanted to install the “Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Tool” (which for some reason took several minutes to find), and after that there was the rest of the 123 updates…