[Oldman 1]

I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 Laptop that is one year old. It has 2GB of memory with a Duo Core T5600 processor. I am using Windows XP Home Edition with SP2. I have Norton 360 (recently upgraded to 2.0, but after the below described problems begin), Spy Sweeper, and Registry Mechanic installed. I also have Dell Support Center installed on computer.

I have my Windows Updates set to “notify me but don’t automatically download or install them”. I recently got a Windows Update Notification icon in my system tray. It was the update for SP3. As soon as I started to download it, it closed out and the icon in the system tray went away. For the first few times that I started up my computer afterwards, the icon would flash in the system tray then immediately go away. Finally, it got to the point that it would not even flash in the tray.

Does anyone know what caused this? Is it a Windows problem or a Norton problem? I have a desktop with all the same stuff on it that I have on this laptop, but the problem doesn’t occur on the desktop. I found one entry on a Symantec tech forum talking about this exact problem, but there was no solution posted.

[Broni]

Restart computer in Safe Mode with Networking, wait a few minutes, and see if updates icon is back.

[Oldman 1]

Thanks Broni for this suggestion. However, starting in the Safe Mode with Networking did not solve the problem. If you have any other ideas, please let me know. Even when they don't work I still learn something.

[Broni]

Norton may be causing this behavior.
Read here: http://www.microsoft.com/communities...&cr=&sloc=&p=1
Last post by PA Bear, gives some more advice.

[Oldman 1]

Today, for some unknown reason, the Windows Update Icon showed back up in my tray. Who knows what happened. But it may have been something that Broni had me do. Thanks for your help.

[oshwyn5]

Be patient, the sp3 update can take a half hour , an hour or even more to download depending on how many components you do not have installed . It is not uncommon for the windows update icon to become "hidden" as the update downloads when it is this large.

Then when it gets there, disable your antivirus while it installs , this may take some time too; so be patient, do not panic and assume it is not installing.
Same thing on the restart, if it seems to freeze, wait until you see no hard drive activity for several minutes before you press the reset button.

Unlike previous updates, SP3 is designed to resume from an interrupted download or install; but this does not mean that you should interrupt it.

[Broni]

It is not uncommon for the windows update icon to become "hidden" as the update downloads when it is this large.

Never heard of it.

[Oldman 1]

Thanks to oshwyn5 for your input on installing SP3 (although my request for advice on that was on another post). I took all the recommended precautions before installing SP3, including backing up everything, although backup is something I do frequently anyway. After download I disabled my Norton 360. EVERYTHING went very smoothly.

I connect my laptop to the internet via wireless connection through my home Linksys router which is connected to cable. Download took 13 minutes, installation took 15 minutes, and 5 minutes to restart computer. Pretty quick considering the size of SP3. Obviously I haven’t had time to check out & test everything, but there are already a couple of things that are much quicker. The one most noticeable is opening and closing an Office 2003 word document. WOW!

Again, thanks.

[oshwyn5]

Originally Posted by Broni

Never heard of it.

Personally I have only seen it happen twice; on machines with "hide inactive icons " selected.
I have seen other machines with the same "hide inactive icons" continue to show the windows update icon for the duration.
I suspect it is some minor customization the user has done which makes the difference; but do not think it worth the time it would take to figure out why it hides as long as eventually it reappears and prompts for install; especially since it only happens on big updates like the service pack .