I have now "cleaned" all of the .net files using the .NET CLEANUP TOOL

see:http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/windows/t/3970217-re-problem-with-windows-update.html

I now will start again, thanks for your info.

In reply to a post by Brunel:

I deleted everything but 4

Ahh, well I said start with 4 and work back. The logic being that in theory any updates coming in would be for the most recently released version. It's not watertight logic, but the odds are favourable.

The .NET versions, as said elsewhere are not superceding each other in the typical sense. For some reason they are there independently. That's why I figured the newest version might the one to start with.

I used the cleaner, as mentioned.

Then installed 3.5 SP1 which installed 3, 3.5 etc.

The WIN update advised .NET4 which I did.

Now update still wants 3.5 etc.

I give up...!!!

Do you get any error messages or codes?

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

What is all this .NET stuff for ?

It's a framework/platform for running Windows applications. It sits on top of Win32 and was designed to be more secure and to be portable. It's basically an attempt to define 'The platform of the future' by Microsoft.

It's not a bad attempt, actually. Performance can be a bit iffy and personally I prefer RAII over garbage collection but it is easier to write for. For once in their existence Microsoft actually produced an orthogonal and logically consistent API. They had to poach a developer from Borland to do it, though

I think MS's problem is that they employ so many developers. It means they lack incentive to share and re-use code. As a result you end up with a hodge-podge of APIs, several different ways of doing the same thing and bizarre kludges. Borland always had a smaller team of developers so they were used to sharing and leveraging each other's code. They couldn't afford to invent things more than once and to be consistent so that developers could move between projects easily.

Sadly Borland basically failed and MS survived. That probably tells you all you need to know about software development

Edited by Andrue (Mon 21-Feb-11 15:00:58)