Home Server Projects
I've always been interested in servers for home use. Since all entertainment media has gone digital, there is an unprecedented opportunity to make your custom “dream” entertainment center real for very little outlay. It is only a matter of time until home entertainment servers become 21st century “white goods”.
Monday 16 June 2008, 6:34 AM
Ya need XP Service Pack 3? Yeah buddy. I got ya servicepack3 right here!
Sometimes I think I am a masochist. I just finished installing a volume license of Windows XP Pro with slipstreamed Service Pack 2 on it onto a computer for which I only had to supply a Video driver. All of the relevant drivers are part of the operating system install or the slipstreamed Service Pack 2. The system is similar to a number of computers we are still using for our field equipment. I installed the proper video driver and rebooted. Everything was verified to work properly. Please remember that this is a virgin system that has had NO other application software installed, no virus scanners, graphics editing packages, no compilers etc. etc. It isn't even attached to a Domain. In other words, we're talking a system that has absolutely nothing installed on it except what Microsoft would call the baseline Windows XP Pro SP2 operating system image.
The particular volume license CDROM with SP2 on it I used has been successfully installed dozens of times on various computers in the office. It will likely be the operating system install base for our new remotely managed field computer images. The Service Pack 2 release date was in December 2007. (Yeah I bet ya didn't know that the publish date was important did ya?)
Something I spotted back in Windows NT 4.0 days. Service packs get modified or re-compiled and re-released usually without hardly anybody being the wiser. NT 4.0 SP6a was a notable exception. When I noticed that years ago, I decided back then that "from now on I would only install Service Packs from the complete downloaded package." I would "Never do an on-line install", no, nien nyet etc. Not from an online connection that could be filled with disastrous outcomes if enough of the wrong bits got flipped during transmission from the Redmond mothership to the computer in front of me.
Now for the masochistic part. I have attempted to install SP3, (after downloading the ISO and burning it to CD AND verifying that the image was complete) on 2 previous systems with resounding failures.
One system had a slip-streamed SP2 volume licensed image installed on it. The other had a Microsoft SP2 CD originated image for a DELL cpu. Neither one would work properly once SP3 installed. For try number 3, I did it the way I swore I would never do again, I did a hot-on-line-through Windows Update install.
It downloaded all of the high priority package(s). Attempted to install about 20 plus packages along with SP3. Couldn't install any of them. Couldn't tell me why nothing could be installed. Knowledge Base had NO info about SP3, errors during installation, why individual files could not be installed etc.
So I went and did the digital equivalent of dumpster diving and I dug around looking for SP2 packages. Turns out I have 3. One was dated 12/14/2007. One was dated 1/26/2005. The third one I'm going to need to look at when I get into the office but I'll bet you a dozen donuts it won't match either of the other 2. Wonder which version of SP2 the idiots that did the regression testing (assuming they did some, hard to tell from my standpoint) actually tested SP3 against?
My bet is on the SP2 version BEFORE 2007 simply because all of the 99plus patches you have to install instead of SP3 are dated from January 2007 to April or so 2008. Assuming that what Microsoft says is the truth (hmm) then I've got something on my testbox with SP2+ that's only missing some few new features.
Hey Microsoft! Pull that dog off the rack and send it back to be re-worked! SP3 as far as I'm concerned is trash.
If you can't get a Service Pack to work right for a software product that is supposedly at least 7 years old, how are we to believe that you can do it right with Vista? Why should we trust you?
That is why Open Source will eventually win. If you've got a problem that is causing you issues and you're not big enough (10,000+ license say) to get the Gorilla's attention, then at least you can get the source code and fix it!
PreviousComments on this post
How pleasing to read your experiences with SP3, thank you very much. Now at least I know that I'm not going crazy... As part of my experimentation with multi-booting my laptops, I made a fresh installation of XP Professional, from the Fujitsu Recovery DVD that came with it. Then let it go online and get whatever updates it wanted. The mandatory updates for SP2 installed... then SP3 installed... then I noticed that there were still a few optional updates that had not been installed. I went back to install them... and they wouldn't install. No errors, no commentary, they just wouldn't install, exactly as you describe. I know what those updates are, and I know that they are installed on this "live" XP Professional SP3 disk that I normally run in this laptop, so at some point (most probably pre-SP3) they installed just fine. So obviously, allowing SP3 to install first then prevents them from installing somehow. Grrrr.
Contrary to so many of the comments on ZDNet and elsewhere, I have installed XP SP3 successfully on a number of computers including ones with AMD Athlon processors and heavily skinned computers, Flyakite 3.5 (A Mac lookalike) for instance.
In some cases, SP3 has been been applied progressively through the Betas and Release Candidates (without being uninstalled in most cases). The final SP3 was applied using the CD ISO download. In some cases, SP2 had been applied from the original CD issued by MS some years ago.
What I've never attempted was an online istallation of SP3 from the MS udate site which as this would have meant that files were only selectively installed. From the CD, all the files of SP3 were installed, and registered.
I experienced two quirks only, one of which is annoying, the other was cured in the final realease. After installing Betas and Release Candidates, MS update site no long identifed new security updates except for the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool. This has been resolved in the Final Release of SP3. The other irritation is that Internet Explorer now freezes when a new site is being loadied, particularly irritating when a site is vey slow to load.
MS stated that earlier Betas of SP3 required to be uninstalled before installing subsequent versions, ans also that SP3 should be applied to a fully patched system. Uninstalling SP3 resulted in uninstalling all the patches previously installed, subsequent to SP2 I presume. I recorded 99+ patches to be reinstalled, so I only did this once.
The significant bit of data that you included was that you did the following:
"In some cases, SP3 has been been applied progressively through the Betas and Release Candidates (without being uninstalled in most cases). The final SP3 was applied using the CD ISO download. In some cases, SP2 had been applied from the original CD issued by MS some years ago.
"
That's the big difference. The volume license disk I'm using (SP1) has a full ISO of a prior SP2 slip-streamed into it. The "virgin" install I'm talking about, a SP1 with SP2 slip-stream, didn't have all the downloaded and prior versions of OS files in it obtained through the on-line patches UNTIL I downloaded the SP2+ 99 patches AND then let it update via Windows Update on-line to SP3. In that case I agree with you. I didn't get all of the SP3 stuff downloaded onto the box because presumably it was already there in the previous patches Windows Update filled in with post SP2 and prior to SP3.
So the questions remain. What are in the downloaded patches that SP3 needs that is not in the SP2 ISO's from before BUT available in the downloaded SP2+ patches? Which version of SP2 do I need to use to slipstream? I've already figured out that the SP3 ISO I have is a total waste of time. I won't be slip streaming THAT into the volume license! The problem is to find which of the 99+ patches are the significant ones and add those to the stew before slipstreaming SP3 onto the volume license.
I got out of IT nearly 8 years ago to get back into engineering. Now it seems like I'm getting sucked back into IT because the marketing department or the Microsoft stockholders can't leave the software gurus and the version control people at MS to do their job right. They were pulled off the SP3 project probably 3 or 4 years ago and told they needed to help with Vista. Now they are back trying to catch up on XP but something got through the net.
To use "Micro-Speak", the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) for XP just went up for everybody that has been applying ISOs or approved and managed patches to SP2 prior to SP3. Simply because it seems that at least one but probably 2 or 3 dependency files for SP3 are available only through Windows Update. The trick is going to be to find out which ones.
i've been working relatively hard these days (just got back after a 2-week vacation) and am still downloading sp3. my peers tell me all the great things about it but i can't, for the life of me, see the difference when i use their machines. i want to form an opinion, but reviews like these really help in the search for the perfect machine. if only all of us had super computers in our kitchen sink...
Done some more testing and I have verified with 3 others at the company that have all been independently attempting to install SP3. The trick seems to be that either a) you've used an old version of SP2 and you have to connect to the Windows Update site to install more patches (SP2+) and then use Windows Update to upgrade to SP3 OR b) you've downloaded a later version of SP2, installed it and then tried to install the SP3 ISO. Either of those two scenarios seems to work.
Although I haven't had a chance to verify it, my opinion is that at some point you have to expose the SP2 install to a WGA download and install from some time after the first of the year (2008).
Everybody I've talked to or conversed with has either done the Windows Update route completely and have had no problem putting SP3 on their system or they've exposed their SP2 system to Windows Update or an complete SP2 downloaded after the first of the year. Doing a slipstream of an older version of SP2 (from before the end of 2007) onto a volume license disk of SP1 doesn't allow SP3 to install. Its happened to me 3 times and it happened today to a guy I'm working with on the imaging project.
In any case more to come on this Microsoft WGA-crapped out service pack.
