SP2 download/setup

[kellrobinson]

I have a three-year old Toshiba satellite laptop that doesn't have SP2.
It did, but I had to do a recovery. I went to the microsoft website
to get SP2. It says there are two versions, the IT professional
version and the single user version. When I tried to get the single
user version it took me to an automatic update page with about 40
updates, for a total of about 9 megs. I was wondering, is this SP2, or
more recent upgrades? Automatic update has already installed several
upgrades on my computer that are almost surely not part of SP2, because
I haven't seen any changes in the control panel and so forth. They are
KB898461, Installer 3.1, Background Intelligent Transfer Service 2.0
and WinHTTP5.1(KB842773), Windows Genuine Advantage Validation
Tool(KB892130), and KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe.

I wanted to make sure I got SP2 so I went back and got the professional
version, which downloaded in about 20 minutes (T1 line at the library).
The setup wizard ran for a while and aborted, did some uninstalling,
and finally gave me a message that windows has been incompletely
upgraded, it might not run correctly. Nice.
So now, what should I do? I think it will just be a waste of time to
try installing the "professional" version of SP2 again. I would really
like to install the upgrades in the correct order.

 

[PopS]

Maybe someone else will pop in with better advice for you, but in
the meantime, I can tell you this:

SP2 for XP is much, much larger than 9 Meg. I suspect that what
you got to were the Hotfixes required BEFORE the SP2. There are
also a bunch of Hotfixes AFTER SP2.

IMO, the best solution is to reinstall XP again, and then turn on
the Windows Update automation feature and let it have its way for
a few days. MS will inspect your installation and send you all
the required updates. Personally, I leave it on all the time;
updates come along fairly frequently.

Also, rather than installing SP2 via the update path, I also
think it's better to go and download the entire SP2 to your drive
so you have it for future crashes, whatever and don't have to do
the online thing again. Same for the Hotfixes, but if you're on
a digital line, they don't take long to be applied with the
windows update feature.

Luck!

Pop