WindowsXP critical updates after reinstall

[John Louis]

Recently I had to reinstall an early version of WindowsXP home on a new Hard
Disk. To my
surprise I found that I had to download and install 48 critical updates from
Microsoft. With a dial-up modem this took several hours.

I noticed that the previous updates are shown in the original Windows folder
on the old Hard Disk. Can the updates be reinstalled from these folders or
is there another way to prevent the huge and time-consuming downloads?

Thanks
John Louis

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi John,

You would have needed to download the Stand-Alone versions of the updates
from the Windows Update Catalog in order to reuse them. Unfortunately, you
will need to redownload them all. For future recoveries, you may want to
order teh free security CD, which contains SP1 as well as all of the
critical updates through October 2003:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/cd/order.asp

Hopefully, you were doing a repair installation and not an "over the top"
installation, or you may have a few other problems as well.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Windows
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Alex Nichol]

I noticed that the previous updates are shown in the original Windows folder
on the old Hard Disk. Can the updates be reinstalled from these folders or
is there another way to prevent the huge and time-consuming downloads?

Those unfortunately are not the updates: They are the stored files that
were replaced *by* the updates, kept so you could uninstall.

It could be worth getting the consolidated CD of security updates
(which includes SP1) against another occasion - order at
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/cd/order.asp

It is getting a bit out of date, but if you also got the downloads for
the following on a broadband , especially
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;835732 (Sasser worm patch)
and the
837009 (OE Cumulative)
832894 (IE Cumulative)
828741 (XP Cumulative)
828028 (ASN 1)
837001 (Jet Engine)

and burned them to CD too, you would be near up to date

 

[John Louis]

Rick

Thanks for the info. I have ordered the update CD from Microsoft.

As I have said before, I needed to reinstall WindowsXP on a new HD and it is
not clear to me what you mean by an "over the top" installation?

John Louis

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi John,

By "over the top", I mean a reinstall over the existing system without
formatting. This was commonly used in the "old days" to correct issues in
older versions of Windows, and many people mistakenly still do this in
WinXP. In WInXP, one should do a repair installation to preserve settings,
programs, and file access. Doing the "over the top" reinstall can cause a
permanent loss of access to data files if they are encrypted due to a loss
of the original security ID's.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Windows
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone