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Windows XP SP2 Update on S5000J and S3010CL
I finally installed Windows XP SP2 on my Compaq Presario S5000J
and S3010CL Desktop machines. They are both 2003 vintage machines with Athlon processors that came with Windows XP Home SP1 installed. The Blue star down in Systray with the October threat of no more updates gave me little choice. Both machines are now running SP2 and seem to be working fine, but I thought I would share a few things about my experience with others who have held off. During the install on the S5000J, I made a made a decision, which I feel fortunate did not result in disaster. I did the install from a Windows Update CD, I ordered from Microsoft. After about 30 minutes, the progress bar was at about 75% and the Update reported "Performing Cleanup". Well over an hour later, the status had not changed and the progress bar had not moved. Having read a report on the internet of the install hanging at that point, I assumed that my install had hung and did a restart. I was very fortunate, that the shutdown was sufficiently orderly to allow for a successful reboot. The reboot took about 10 minutes, as the SP2 setup took place. Happily, I had an operational machine. I considered trying to do a restore, but found that the restore point I had created had been overwritten. When I looked at the Svcpack.log file and the time stamps on a lot of new uninstall files, I found out what had happened. During the "Performing Cleanup" phase Hotfixes were being "Migrated". I had waited so long to install SP2, that there were about 50 Hotfixes which had accumulated and that needed to be processed. Based on the time stamps on the uninstall files, it was taking about 1 to 3 minutes for each. When I reviewed the available restore points, I realized that the Update package was creating a Restore Point for each Hotfix. Since it had processed about 30 of them, and I have room for less than 10 Restore Points, that explained why I could no longer access the one I created before I began the SP2 install. With no easy way to turn back, I went to Windows update. It found a new batch of updates, which installed with no problems. All of the Hotfixes that had not been "Migrated" were successfully installed except for a few which had been installed prior to the SP2 install. At this point in time the machine is current and everything seems to be fine. I decided to do the S3010CL from the Windows Update website. I thought that it might handle the restore Points differently. It took about 25 minutes to download the update on my cable modem connection. Again, it took about 30 minutes to reach the "Performing Cleanup" phase with the progress bar at 75%. This time I waited. An hour of cleanup showed no change, but when I checked the machine after an hour and 15 minutes of cleanup, I got the "Updating Complete" message. The machine took about 10 minutes to reboot. I then went to the Windows Update website to get the additional Hotfixes that the machine now needed. Everything was fine on this machine also. FYI, each Hotfix during the cleanup had again generated a Restore Point, so my Restore Point was long gone. I thought I would share my experience, in case anyone else has put off SP2 this long. My key message is to be patient. I never should have assumed that the update was hung. There was plenty of disk activity going on. I feel very lucky. Prior to starting the SP2 update, I had installed all the other High Priority and Hardware updates from the Windows Update website. I don't know how many of the hardware updates were critical, but I suspect that the amdk7.sys may well be. The new file version is 5.1.2600.2180(xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158). Seeing SP2 in the file version makes me think it was critical. The old driver was dated 7/1/2002 and the new one was dated 12/17/2002. I had also visited the HP/Compaq page for "Important Information from HP About Windows XP Service Pack 2". I did do CheckDisks and Defrags prior to the update and made sure I had enough free space. Since you probably won't be able to use System restore to go back, I would strongly recommended you create a backup which can restore your hard drive to the state it was in prior to the update, if you have the resources. FYI: I didn't, which was very scary. The idea of having to reinstall my software from the Recovery partition or disks and then reinstalling and updating all of my software and reinstall the user files from my backups was something I would not have enjoyed. I think I may invest in some disk cloning and/or backup software and hardware. -- Ken Wampach - FirstNameATLastNameDOTorg |
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