Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 11:06:50 +0100 From: Philip Nienhuis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [LIB] Win2000 SP4 worth it or not?
Matt Hanson wrote: > > Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 20:12:52 -0800 (PST) > From: Matt Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Win2000 SP4 worth it or not? > > Real quick... anyone have any option on whether or not Win2000 Service Pack > 4 is really worth idownloading and nstalling? From the looks of the user > comments at download.com, I think not: > > http://www.download.com/3302-2098_4-10210714.html > > But it's a real problem to have to go to Windows Update to install all of > the 38-40 patches via dialup every time you load a new copy of W2K. And > the process of downloading the updates individually and figuring out what > order to install them is a real pain, if possible to do correctly at all. 1. *That* ^^^^^ is precisely the reason that a service pack is so practical. 2. On W2K SP2 and SP3, one of my home-developed apps was able to solidly lock up W2K (the app contains a SVGA mouse driver I wrote in assembler. I think that was the culprit). On SP4, until now, that hasn't happened. That by itself doesn't imply superiority of SP4, but it more than just coincidental. 3. I tend to doubt the negative reports in the URL you provided. I'd rather think the PC's in question were already flakey. 4. Yet it is better to slipstream a service pack into a W2K installation CDROM and then install it, than applying SPx to an already installed (and possibly somehow "polluted") W2K. If you want to try Fred Vorck's IE-removal trick, you need to do this anyway. It is easy to do. BTW if you use Vorck's trick, about 2/3 of the hotfixes since SP4 are simply not needed - they are for IE, Outlook etc which are no more present..... 5. A while ago Microsoft gave away hotfix CDROM's including patches for all Windows versions, updated until about last summer. Perhaps you can get still them? 6. There is a trick to save the hotfixes: ----------------------------------------- A. You need to keep track of which hotfixes and patches are applied in what order. Hint: higher numbered hotfixes obviously have to applied after lower numbered ones. B. Winupdate removes the downloaded update files once they have been applied, but... C. ...Microsoft still hasn't learned the game: these downloaded files are not gone completely! On all Windows versions I saw (95 until XP home) the donwloaded files are still present in the browser cache...... look in Temporary Internet Files etc, the file names are mangled but still contain the original hotfix number. There are 4 caches, look in all of them (hint: sort on date). D. Copy these files a.s.a.p. to a backup subdir and later on CDROM, after having changed their names to something more mnemonic. E. Once you've installed Windows, simply re-apply the hotfixes in the order you wrote down in A. F: Presto! Philip
