If you have SP1 Beta installed its likely giving you your problems, Uninstall by doing the below when its finished restart again. Then run windows update. And your problem should be fixed. This worked for me and I was having the exact same issues.
If you managed to try the public beta of the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) the chances are you will need to uninstall this beta software prior to downloading and installing the final RTM (release to manufacturer) version when it is due to be released in March 2008.
With any beta software it is always wise to remove the original beta before updating to a final release. If you have imaged backups of your hard drive, then it is easy to re-image the hard drive, thus removing all traces of the original beta service pack.
In the absence of imaged backups of your hard drive you will be looking at manually removing the beta software. Fortunately this is relatively easy to do.
1/ Click the Windows Start button
2/ From the Start Menu, Click on Control Panel
3/ When the Control Panel window opens, Click on the Programs and Features icon.
4/ This now opens the Uninstall or Change program window
5/ On the left of the window you will see a list of Tasks.
6/ Click on the View Installed Updates link
7/ The Installed Updates window will now populate with all the Windows updates installed on your PC.
8/ From the list of available updates, Right click on the 'Service pack for Microsoft Windows (KB936330) option and select Uninstall.
9/ The service pack will now begin to uninstall. Please be patient, this may take some time.
10/ After the service pack has been uninstalled you will be asked to restart your computer. At this point, restart you PC.
11/ After you have restarted your PC the service pack will have been removed.
12/ If you have a stand alone copy of the final version of service pack 1 you can now install it. If' on the other hand, you don't have a stand alone copy you will have to ait for Windows Update to download and install the final service pack version.
why windows still says my Vista activation will expire in 0 hours?
