Windows Updates - Update history status is either cancelled or failed

After viewing my update history in the Windows Update website, I have found out that some of my updates have either 'cancelled' or 'failed' as their status. Most of the new updates have 'succeeded' as their status. The problem is that the Windows Update website does not show these failed updates as available for download and Windows XP's Automatic Updates do not notify me to redownload these updates. (I set Automatic Updates to notify before downloading.) I have also viewed the hidden updates in the Windows Update website in case I have accidentally hidden some updates, but there are none listed there. The updates that have either 'cancelled' or 'failed' as their status are not listed on the Windows Update website updates list even if they have been marked as high priority. Does anyone know of a fix for this? I am worried that my copy of XP contains security problems that have not been patched for months. My OS is Windows XP SP2, Automatic Updates set to notify before download. I update as soon as possible afer the notification. This is also my first post, btw. Edit: Spelling

Hello dazed_00 and welcome to WTT!

I can understand your concern and it is a good concern to have. It's great that you keep your system as up-to-date as you can. What you are seeing is a complete history of attempts to install each Windows Update, no matter how many times it tried to install the update. The reason you don't see the updates available to you anymore is that, although there may have been a failed or cancelled update, a successful update was performed at some point in time. That said, you have nothing to worry about, all of the updates that failed were able to get successfully completed later on.

A better way to look at the update history is to sort by update, do this by clicking on the "Update" column header. It should show all attempts at each update according to the update name, most likely with the "completed" entries first.

Regards,

Ax

I see. I didn't know that it also included failed attempts. I thought that these updates were not installed at all. Thanks for the info!

No problem, glad to assist!