what os and firewall are you using smirnoff_rules
this was posted on another site
Microsoft Update seems to work fine now when I use this link:
[DLMURL]http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdat...t.aspx?ln=en-us[/DLMURL]
But when I use
http://update.microsoft.com, I get redirected to the Windows Update v6 site.
The cause of the problem may have been A2 Personal (a-squared), my antitrojan and intrusion detection software. When selecting Start -> Search -> Files and folders, the Windows Explorer window would open and then would close due to this error, which shows in the Event Viewer as an Application error. At other times, Explorer would unexpectedly shut down for no apparent reason.
Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2900.2180, faulting module a2handler.dll, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x0001b6c1.
To solve the problem, I added explorer.exe as an exclusion in A2 Personal. I did the same thing with iexplore.exe. That fixed my Explorer Search problem, and it may also have fixed the Microsoft Update problem.
Today when I visited Microsoft Update, I turned off my firewall and all taskbar programs. What I could not close manually, I closed with Task Manager and Process Explorer. Microsoft Update seems to be working now.