Microsoft Update failures with KB973923 and KB970363

I am running XP Home Edition Version 2002 with Service Pack 3.

I am experiencing repeated Microsoft update failures with the update for
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistibutable Package (KB973923)
and the update for Microsoft Silverlight (KB970363). The error code on the
first is 0x02 and on the second 0x663.

In relation to the first failing update and taking a hint from some of the
other discusions on similar problems I looked in Control Panel/Add Remove
programs to see what was installed and found Microsoft Visual C++ 2005
Redistributable (5.12 MB) and Visual C++ 9.0/Visual C++ 2008 x86 Runtime
v9.0.3.30729.01 but no reference to Visual Studio as such. Using Explorer I
found 3 files presumably related to Visual Studio namely:
C:\Programs\Microsoft Visual Studio\Common\IDE\IDE98\ASP.TLB,
D:\Programs\Micrsoft Office\Office10\VSRuntime\VisualStudioTeamCore.dll and
D:\Programs.......\VSRuntime\1033\VisualStudioTeamCoreUI.dll. Itried to
uninstall Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable which failed getting a
message "This installation package could not be opened." I also downloaded
and tried to run the Windows Installer cleanup utility (msicuu.exe) (found at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301), but it failed with the same message.

I have not yet tried anything (other than a repeated attempt to instal the
update) in relation to the failing Silverlight update.

Could someone point me to the way to sort these failing updates out?
--
Richard Kirkby

Hello Richard,

Silverlight suppoяt forums
<http://silverlight.net/forums/>
<http://silverlight.net/forums/13.aspx>

<Have you seen:
<http://blogs.msdn.com/rpomeroy/archive/2008/06/10/how-to-manually-clean-up-a-bad-silverlight-installation.aspx>

See the "How to obtain help" section of
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973923

Thanks for the replies. I eventually fixed the immediate problem concerning
the failure of these two updates to instal by using system restore to go back
a week after which the updates installed properly. I think the problem may
have been caused by my having installed a very old optional update for an
Nvidia graphics card driver. The driver change did not work at all well and
I then used the roll back driver option in Device Manger to undo the change.
The driver was fixed but I suspect windows installer was messed up in some
way. I had tried the driver update in a forlorn attempt to cure a problem of
Windows freezing seemingly almost at random - which is still not cured.

SOLUTION:

If you are having problems downloading, installing and updating your windows system try the following... (It solved my problem updating KB973923)

Go to "Start" --> "Control Panel" --> "System" --> "Administrative Tools" -->
"Services"

Find "Windows Update" - Set this to start Automatically
Find "Windows Installer" - Set this to start Automatically

Restart the two services, and run Windows Update again :-)