On XP-SP3 Windows update service is permanently disabled since May of 2014. As is BITS. Yet C:\Windows\WindowsUpdate.log gets new entries several times a day complaining that check for updates fails, install failed at shutdown, no updates to install ... what a surprise. The logging goes on an on forever. Pest name is wuaueng.dll. Processes that seem to run this pest are winlogon and explorer. It's harmless but annoying. How can I stop it?
Disabling Automatic Updates and BITS services AFAIK doesn't prevent Windows from writing to the WindowsUpdate.log file in XP. Have you tried setting the log file to Read-only?
No, I have not. I suspect windows will complain and might start a new one. Or crash and mess up my computer. I think the solution is to find what starts that wuaueng.dll and kill that. I don't think I have the skills to find out.
The WindowsUpdate.log file can be deleted and Windows XP will recreate the file upon restart of the OS to the same location. (C:\WINDOWS) It is even possible to run XP without no WindowsUpdate.log file. Easiest way though would be to set the log file to Read-only so Windows won't write to it. You can test all this yourself, but if concerned about problems make a image backup before doing any changes. NOTE: The Automatic Update service would need to be stopped in order to delete the file.
You were right on the money. All it took was set it to read only, quiet through reboots, so nice So I didn't bother deleting. And yes, service would need to be off, which, it is, as I wrote in the first post. For years it's been off except on delayed patch tuesdays.
