We are running into a Problem with Enabling Automatic Updates on Windows 2000 Professional boxes. The problem is not across the board and cannot be pinpointed to one particular build, machine or ghost image.

When we go to enable it through the control panel, all options are greyed out. If we log in as Administrator or another user, sometimes, this fixes it, but other times it doesn't.
If we try to start the service, through services, that does not fix it.
If we try to creat a local group policy, when we get to Windows Update, we get access denied, followed by "could not start the automatic update on the local machine" , even if we are logged in as admin
Creating a policy trhough active directory is not an option here. We also do not have SUS in use at this time.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated!