> Then, strangely, I ran Task Manager and was surprised to see that there were
> processes whose names were either garbage characters or blank.

Not a good sign, Rob. Recommend you have a look at this tutorial :
http://forum.aumha.org/viewtopic.php...a812 4f4a2c28
then have the system scanned at Kaspersky's Online Virus Scanner :
http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner

For instructions for removing malware, start here :
http://wiki.castlecops.com/Malware_R...tion:_Overview

MowGreen [MVP 2003-2006]
===============
*-343-* FDNY
Never Forgotten
===============


Rob Wilcox wrote:

> Hi,
> A WXP-SP2 machine is having trouble executing Windows Update. Error
> 80070424. I have tried several of the suggestions in this newsgroup. I came
> upon the fact that there is no wuauserv key in
> HKLM/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services, and from the posts it seems like
> there should be.
> Then, strangely, I ran Task Manager and was surprised to see that there were
> processes whose names were either garbage characters or blank. Maybe
> (probably) there is more wrong with this machine than meets the eye. Can you
> make a suggestion?
> Rob