Got a friend who wants to give her old HP laptop to her granddaughter. She asked me to get rid of her personal files, so I decided to see if Factory Restore would work. Using HP Recovery Manager, I ran some hardware checks, backed up her data to an external HDD, then ran the Factory Restore. Went very well, and Windows Update started showing me things to install. Ran WU several times, then came to a point where it said Service Pack 1 should be installed (this is a 32-bit Vista Home Premium machine, BTW). I tell it go ahead, and the install appears to be starting, then after just a couple seconds WU says the SP1 install was successful. BUT SP1 is still showing as an available update (and I know a “real” install takes some time).
The laptop came from the factory with a 60-day version of Norton Internet Security. Norton said I should run Live Update, but when I did virus definitions and one other update would not install. According to Norton, this is because the laptop needs a version of Internet Explorer higher than 7. Windows Update is not offering any updates to IE, so I attempted to use the MS download site for this. Whether I try to run the update directly or from a saved download, it doesn’t work, either.
Any suggestions about fixing these two problems greatly appreciated.
