Microsoft and the .NET saga

So for the past half year or so, I have been trying on and off to install security updates for Microsoft .NET 1.1 and 2.0. Each time, it hadn't worked. I've now disabled automatic updates because they always fail on these two old updates.

Today, I thought maybe I would take a real crack at fixing this issue, and so did an extensive google search for any information on installing/uninstalling/repairing a .NET installation. There is, not surprisingly, a huge number of problems that people have experienced, this being a Microsoft component. I finally found a page on the Microsoft site that displays instructions on repairing .NET.

Unfortunately, none of the instructions work. I tried to uninstall the component, and it tells me source files are not available. I try re-installing from source, and it tells me that I can't install. I try manually deleting and it tells me the file is in use (yes, I've disabled anti-virus). Because this is an MS Windows machine, it's virtually impossible to tell which file is using the .NET stuff.

Basically, I'm not allowed to do anything productive with the Microsoft stuff on this computer. This incidentally also means I can't install VS 2005 because it needs a working .NET installation, so I can't debug my pecl extensions on Windows. My next computer is going to be a MacBook Pro, and I'm never looking back.