Hi,
your post (clipped):----

<<< I couldn't download that either because I got the error message "Internet
Explorer was not able to open this Internet site.  The requested site is either
unavailable or cannot be found.  Pleast try again later>>>>

Very very weird it may sound but is your computer clock (especially the year part) working ok?

explanation for this strange question:---

quite a few months ago I was simply unable to do any windows updates in spite of repeated tweaks and i kept on getting exactly the same error msg described by you.I left it at that and one day when I was doing on line reservations I found that the dates/ month i entered were being rejected .in frustration i asked a friend sitting by my side to try out and after a few attempts he suddenly looked at my computer clock( I still do not know what made him do that )and we found it was behind by five years(year was showing as 2000) and the time and date was more or less ok.

I must add here that prior to this i had to reformat and re-instal win 98 se because my hdd was giving trouble. somehow the year seems to have got fixed at 2000 and not noticed by me till then

 we put it right and after a few days I routinely tried windows update and it just worked. then I went to microsoft site and went through the knowledge base articles on error msg's and sure enough it was there. the link is given below.

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;816037&spid=2073&sid=204

please see the last part of this article

FWIW------Venkat Viswanathan

      "Hold No Punches.." Rode brings you great shareware/freeware
        programs with his honest opinions in this weekly column.
                       http://freepctech.com/rode