Finally found a use for the Microsoft Security CD I got a few months back. I know that Service Pack 2 for Windows XP is kinda out and wanted to give it a bit of testing before I commit my machine to it. Cautious sometimes I am.
So I load up a fresh windows XP install under VMWare to test with. I figured that it’d be nice and fast to get to my current “completely patched” point using the aformentioned CD. So after I complete my install I load up the CD and run it. Nifty little app shows me how to turn on my firewall, set up automatic updates, and then lets me go to the ‘Install Updates’ section. There are four, each of which have to be installed individually.
- Windows XP Service Pack 1
- Update Rollup for Microsoft Windows (all security updates I guess)
- Windows Media Player 9 (don’t really need it but I do have it on my “real” windows box, so I installed this as well)
- DirectX 9 (ditto)
So after a while all the clicking and grinding is done and I am rebooted with my updated to february windows box. Of course, all the security updates have been downloading in the background while they are being installed from CD. Anyway.
“Ok,” says I, “only a couple of updates to go from the live site and I’ll be ready to give SP2 a shot!”
Kinda. Not really.
- 16 Critical Updates
- 17 Windows XP Updates
- 2 Driver Updates
Of course, only the critical updates really matter, but still, 16? And at a 17.5 megabyte download I’d hate to not be on DSL to do this.
The happy part of this is that I only had to reboot five times! Once for each bit on the security CD and once for the windows update I had to do after I did the security CD install. I don’t know if I had to reboot when it told me to, but following the rules…. Wonder if it’d actually been less rebooting to do a windows update instead of using the CD with it’s funky interface.
The irony of it is that the windows update tray icon still doesn’t know that I’m up to date so it keeps prompting me to install the updates that it thinks I don’t have. I’m going to guess that to get rid of that I click install and let the crunching and grinding go on again.
Status of XPSP2 install? Waiting for download to finish…
Update: Seems to have worked ok…. least I know that for when it shows up.