Update_attributes not working

I dont know if its me or the dodgy win-32 intall of ruby/mysql, but I
can’t seem to get update_attributes to work.

In my user controller, I have:

def update
@user = User.find(@params[‘user’][“id”])
if @user.update_attributes(@params[“user”])
flash[“success”] = “Updated Successfully”
redirect_to :action => “list”
else
flash[“success”] = “no good”
redirect_to :action => “list”
end
end

and in my edit.rhtml view, I have a form with fields such as:

I can manually update each column in the table by writing
@user.update_attribute(:firstname, @params[‘user’][“firstname”])
etc, but updating all the attributes at once isn’t working…

please tell me its something simple and stupid that I’ve done!