Death, Taxes & Microsoft

The triad of the inevitable. The source of great frustrations and consternation. The banes of our very existence. In a fit of 'compfrustration' through attempting to deal with the, oft put off, tax preparation and the being put off through near continuous and Illogical hindrances, permission denials, and cryptically or ‘holier than thou’ error messages from my Vista operating system, reminding me that no matter how much I knew; I knew nothing.

I cannot explain all of the technical details about my problem but I'll summarize it as:
I am running Vista Home Premium, as purchased (no upgrade), in attempting to load a tax software [adding tax frustrations on top of computer frustrations: a defensible insanity plea if there ever was one] the load kept failing with error 1935. Tax Software's support group had no resolution.

Separately I had a problem around "Windows Update" failing for some time with an error 80073712. A search through windows support for this particular error yielded nothing, a veritable random number, a false crumb on a trail that lead nowhere. My fellow bloggers and messages posters detailed challenges and horrors of no resolution, no fix from Microsoft. Others suggested removal of secret or hidden files, that make one wonder how much time this problem had cost people to even find these files, let alone the desperation to see what happens when they delete them.

The logical nature of my thinking surmised that there must, nay; had to be, a link between these two problems and if there was a life and death god, or a tax god, or even a OS god, that this deity would show mercy on the suffering to resolve two problems with the resolution of one. Which one would be the next logical question?

Clearing the windows update folder did nothing for me. A few other suggestions tried, all sounding riskier and riskier. I was venturing into destructive territory I felt like the astronaut in the movie 2001 trying to disconnect HAL by being where I should not be, nor should have to be. The frustration boiling my blood and pressing to my face as the steam inside seeks its escape. The course of last resort, the apparent last act of desperation that those before had gone, and seemingly Microsoft’s permanent answer to the problem, was to reinstall Windows.

I had one more thing yet untried. Through some cryptic command line code I had to remove a pending.xml file in winsxs folder (not an easy task) and the windows update program had to be reloaded (which could be done previous due to another 1935 error). In an act of mercy, or display of a miracle, or simply the alignment of the universe, it worked. This fixed MY 1935 error and my error 80073712.

This for me highlights the true power of the internet. Message boards and blogs to share information, catalog possibilities, highlight the unmentionables, and help people get on. So until the next ‘compfrustration’, I was down to the more reasonable two inevitables to overcome. And at least only one of them has a known deadline date.