Hi there, hope someone can throw some light on this....

a friend has an XP pc running with service pack1 and wanted to use itunes and IE7 (both requiring SP2)

Simple I thought to update from microsofts site and get the upgrade...

WRONG!!! the pc comes up with the error about "your settings dont allow active x and so the page might not display properly"

After googling a bit on this it was suggested to edit the reg file (doing this bit from memory now so bear with me...)

somewhere near the end of the reg file tree was "zone" and to set this to 1,2 or 3 but this was set correctly...

Any ideas?

Have you tried adding *.microsoft.com as a Trusted Site?

Failing that, set Automatic Updates to download automatically and install when you tell them to. This will bypass the website entirely and you can still install IE7 that way.

Thanks Adam, I set their updates to install automatically so hopefully when I go round there this evening that would have done it all for me!

I'll let you know how I get on!

Good stuff.

You'll know if it works when IE7 prompts you to be installed. It won't install automatically as such (it requires user confirmation to install), but it should work.

Still cant get this to work!

The automatic updates don't do any thing.... nothing is downloading...

Does the user account your doing this in via XP have permissions to run active x? Try logging into the administrator account and updating the PC, you should have no permission problems.

I am in as an admin. only one account on the PC

Did you try resetting security settings in IE to default levels?

yep, tyed resetting everything to the default & lowest levels. placed all the relivant sites into the trusted list and still nothing.

What is strage is that when they got this PC a couple of year ago, the dial up modem was "locked" to a UK ISP call Supranet.

This company did a deal with the PC manufacturers to have exclusive access to all new customers. There were ways to get round this but the in the end i just installed FF and a new modem for them and that seemed to cure the problem. Now they have broadband so its never been an issue.

Could this have something to do with why it wont let us update anything?

No updates have been installed since they had it in around 2006!!!

I do have an old version of XP that I could install but would rather fix the one they have!

Is this computer networked? Or belongs to a work network or whatever? Sounds like a group policy setting maybe?

No it's a standalone PC... But... FINALLY GOT IT SORTED!
Reinstalled from an old copy of XP - spent a couple of hours doing updates... now everything good!

All to use bloody I-tunes!

Thanks for the help

make sure your other 3rd program are not blocking the Internet Explorer setting before you do this trick.

Tools
Internet Tools
Privacy
Set to Medium or low but this will leave your computer into defenseless to harmfull active X dll