Dear fellow users,
this is the first time I am posting a question in a forum such as this so please be considerate if I have not 'done it right'.
I have been using a customized bare bones version of Windows 2000 on one of my PCs for many years now, reinstalling it from scratch ever so often when it becomes sluggish as it always does, and eventhough I have all available updates and service packs installed I still visit Microsoft update now and then to see if any updates are available for my office compatibility pack (unfortunately, they never are...).
Everything has always been working perfectly until today. After visiting the update home page using IE6 the usual 'Checking if computer has latest version of software installed' came up and then a grey box message window suddenly popped up which said something like 'install root certificate' with a yellow exclamation mark saying it wasn't from a trusted site. For the life of me I can't remember the exact phrasing. The site's name was, however, 'Microsoft' so I clicked install, like I have always done with any other activeX warnings. Then nothing happend for a while until this popped up:
Error number: 0x800B0109
The website has encountered a problem and cannot display the page you are trying to view. The options provided below might help you solve the problem.
Now every time I try to access 'Microsoft update' this message is displayed. I have searched high and low for a solution, but to no avail. I have imported the root certificates from another PC running W2K and I have reinstalled nt5inf.cat from the CD as well as reregistered various dll's as described in kb916260.
Everything else is running perfectly and is unaffected by this problem. I am sure the machine is not infected by malware since I am very careful to download the latest defintions files and I apply regular scans.
I know W2K has long been discontinued but I just like this version of Windows the most. Any help on the matter would be greatly appreciated. I am simply reluctant to do another clean install just because of this...
Many thanks in advance for any ideas.
