Reports have started to emerge that the Microsoft Update site for Windows is having some issues.

While this doesn’t have any direct influence for our community, it may adversely affect everyone.

If the windows clients used to surf the web and, for some of you, update your sites, can not perform security updates, then your clients can easily be infected by future malware attacks.

The problem can, however, be fixed by simply forcing an update of wuweb.dll file of the clients. The process involved is a little technical and will most likely not be done by the everyday user, so it poses a potential for more clients to become infected over time, so that attacks on web sites may indeed happen more often.

I hope Microsoft will fix the issue, so that no technical knowledge is required to fix the issue.

Meanwhile, here’s the technical explanation of how to fixe the problem on windows xp clients, a similar approach may also be possible on other platforms like Vista or Windows7:

Stop the services “Automatic Updates” and “Background Intelligent Transfer Service”
Use a command prompt and change directory to windows\system32
Type in the command “regsvr32 /u wuweb.dll” and hit enter. A prompt will tell you that the unregister process has completed. Click OK to that prompt.
Start the services “Automatic Updates” and “Background Intelligent Transfer Service”
Restart the computer

Now visiting the windowsupdate or microsoft update site will require you to install and reactivate the activex and the problem should be fixed.