This message arises usually for one of two reasons.
1) You have installed SP1 since the initial installation - and of course the disk is still at the RTM level. This means that you must uninstall SP1 beofre attempting the reinstall.
2) You are attempting to do a repair install with a 'slipstreamed' disk, rather than a proper disk with SP1 fully integrated - such disks cannot be used for repair installations.
Thank you kindly, John.
I should perhaps for the sake of consistency report that I actually went ahead with the repa-, sorry, "upgrade" install. As NoelDP brilliantly suggested, this initially failed to begin with due to having installed SP1.
However, it failed again. This time apparently though since my "hardware" is not "compatible". This is indeed strange, since my current Windows installation is from this very disc from which I attempted the upgrade install.
Might it be because I have upgraded my hard drive since? It should still be "compatible" however one would think.
I was going to go ahead and attempt a "clean" install, attempting to save much as it is via hiding it on separate partitions, however I shall first give your above suggesiton a try, John.
Thank you for your assistance.
Well, I have now also tried reinstalling SP1. First via a downloadable executable, then via burning an ISO image. They both failed, with an error message of something to the effect of (translated from Swedish) "irrevocable error".
I then ran the Windows Update troubelshooter script again, which produced the following two log files. I am unable to interpret them, so any and all help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41509884/windowsupdate.log
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41509884/CBS.log
I am inclinced to hint that the only other time I have experienced a malfunction such as this, was when I had installed a new hard drive (in this very machine), and Windows suddenly considered my Windows installation illegitimate.
I think I had exactly the same errors -- presumably Windows in such occasions disables functions such as Windows Update. However, the in question matter ostensibly was solved when whereby making a new clone of the old harddrive, it looked to the OS as if the old hdd still was in place (its "id" or something was now identical).
I however assumed everything now was okay, since I no longer recieved any nag-pop-ups, but who knows. This does come off like a somewhat far-fetched theory however, since via the cloning process everything was copied byte by byte, i.e. including the Windows copy that at the time had no reason to complain about being illegit, and did not do so. But I thought I should mention it.
Thank you, I shall look into it.
Well!
Much to my surprise, the suggestion elaborated on in the forum thread linked to by john4tech actually solved the issue. More to the point, I had to install, or perhaps it was reinstall (I do not know) some kind of Intel chipset or "Matrix technology" drivers.
I can't imagine trying to come to this solution via logical conclusions, but there it is.
After installing the drivers, I could reinstall SP1, and a number of other updates.
However I could mention that this only worked to a certain extent, eventually I came to a point where a small number of updates failed to install. I won't elaborate much on this as future reference as I expect this was due to specific computer/OS configurations, however this issue after several days was seemingly resolved by using a software called "Windows Install Clean Up", and perhaps more importantly manually changing ownership on several folders. The Microsoft Update icon finally is gone from the taskbar, after several months of this annoyance.
Thank you very much all for your input, and especially john4tech!
Amazingally, I managed to encounter the ostensibly exactly same issue however on an entirely different computer (albeit from the same manufacturer).
This time, the disk on which the OS is installed was not cloned in any way, shape or form. Seemingly, the issue has now been resolved for now by uninstalling "Intel Matrix Storage Manager".
I leave it to a wiser sage than myself to provide the logical connection between the Intel software and Microsoft Update.
That's not unusual - se one of my many responses in the WGA forum for Win7 here....
Windows 7 Genuine Advantage Validation Issues (Windows 7) Forum
after looking through a number of forums I finally found how to fix the problem.
Cannot Run Windows Update on a Windows 7 PC?
That's a totally different problem to the one in this thread - the OP's problem was that the services were running properly, but that his system was not being seen as genuine, because of corruption apparently caused by a dodgy set of drivers.
Your problem was caused by turning off vital services.
I had the same issue on a computer I built for my brother in law, windows update got messed so bad because of intel rapid storage drivers, i had to perform a clean reinstall, thankfully the damaged installation wasnt activated yet, so no big deal.
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