Successful Installation of XP SP2

I have just successfully installed XP's SP2 on my pc.

It takes quite a while I can tell you, even with a 512kbs broadband
connection.

My pc has an Athalon XP2000+ processor, 768MB RAM GeForce4 460 graphics
card, 80GB Seagate hard disk & Asus A7N266-C motherboard.

Just to give people an idea what to expect during the installation phase so
they do not get unduly worried as to what is happening here is list of what
to expect from the best of my recollection of the installation phase. I did
not make notes of all aspects of the installation phases, but list my
recollection of what happens.

1. The initial installation begins and downloads a relatively small amount
of data from MS, this takes a few minutes.

2. Their is no modem activity, ie downloading for a long period, this had me
quite worried for a while as I thought the installation had hung, but then
on noticing the hard disk LED permanently lit I presume that a lot of
reading/writing was going on in preparation for the 79.2MB download phase
from MS.

3. The 79.2MB download phase began, this took a while, I did not time it but
guess it was less than 30 mins with a std 512kbs BB connection.

4. A verification of the files downloaded takes place, this takes about
10-15mins

5. Construction of the SP2.cab file and possibly other required .cab
installation files, can't remember what they're called but think some more
..cab files were also created. (Wishing now I had documented the installation
phase properly as it occurred so I could provide this feedback more
accurately.) This takes a few mins.

6. Prior to the installation proper of SP2 the user is advised to back up
the pc. But as this is a huge task on a pc with hundreds of MB's of files, I
elected not to do this as I suspected that during the initial installation
phase in step 1. that a system restore point had already been made. So
unless you want to specifically backup your system then just proceed to the
next phase of the installation. Just remembered it as this point that you
are advised to shutdown all your programs. Well being the careful soul I am
had all the major apps closed anyway as the initial download phase ran. But
being now super careful, and not wanting this SP2 installation to screw up,
I shutdown my firewall (ZoneAlarm Pro 5.1.011.000) and my antivirus program
AVG 7.0 Professional (7.0.264 virus database 264.7.0). I also run a resident
portion of Spybot V1.3 (Tea.exe) with the latest update dated 2004-08-20, I
shut this process down using the taskmanager at this point. The main reason
for shutting down this process is that is specifically flags up changes to
the registry and I expected hundreds of those during the installation phase
of SP2, so if you have installed this program, ensure you do shut it down at
this point, otherwise you could be clicking on "Accept change" more times
than you really would like to.

7. Well surprise surprise, what happens here, all the MS files that appear
to be updated in SP2 get backed up, LOL. I'm not sure of the exact scope of
the files that are automatically backed up or indeed where they go to, as I
looked in the Windows temp folders and WU Update folder and so no files
being dumped in there, also checked in windows\pchealth and nothing found
there or on my d: drive, where my system restore points are stored. I
suspect that ALL the updated files in SP2 are backed up in this phase,
consequently this takes a long time. :-) Probably 15 mins at least.

8. The installation phase proper now begins. At last my pc is about to be
inoculated with the MS equivalent to the MMR jab. (Yes it is safe, the WHO
have said its safe, despite all the anecdotal evidence that it says it can
give rise to autism and bowel disorder syndromes.) This is another fairly
lengthy phase again probably at least 15 mins.

9. Registry is backed up, now I think this happened at this point, which me
makes me now wonder why an automatic system restore point is not just
created as I thought it was during the initial first step of the
installation phases, as this effectively backs up the registry, hmmm, MS
must have some method in their madness.

10. Registry changes are now made, guess all the registering of all those
updated .dll files going on here. Relatively quick, abut 5-10 mins.

11. Installation tidy-up occurs now, more rock on solid lit hard disk LED
phase occurring again here. Relatively quick, 3-5 mins.

12. You have successfully completed installation of SP2! (Whooaoaaa!) Click
OK to restart your computer. (Small prayer to GOD recited at this point.)

13. Well would you believe it, step 13, could be ominous. My pc went through
a system restart. Now there were differences from this point onwards.

14. During the initial reboot phase my pc shows the usual BIOS checks info,
then the screen goes black for a while, then the familiar Windows XP logo
page is displayed, but the running bars in the small window near the middle
of the bottom of this page I'm sure used to be running green bars, now their
running blue bars. (Blue is the colour of my true love eyes, in the morning
when I rise, - hmm)

14. Arrggghhhh - Blue Screen (not of death though). At this point I guess
all the files that could not be updated due to the old versions of core
system critical files being protected by XP get updated. Does not take too
long 2-4 mins.

15. Now I think it was at this point that the screen resolution changed from
the standard VGA mode to a much higher resolution, looked like super VGA
mode to me (1024x768).

16. Screens goes black again, for a while (less than a minute), now I see a
running white bar at the lower part of this black screen. Now I did get this
happen to me after some major update a long time ago, it may have been SP1,
but after a while it stopped. At first I was concerned something was wrong
with my video card. Wonder if this will now be a permanent feature of SP2.

17. Brief blank high resolution blue screen, then the familiar XP logon
window I always get.

18. Normal logon, took quite a long time (2 mins) to get the normal desktop
to be displayed. I have a lot of desktop icons on my pc, and during this
phase the icons are shown in their non-normal mode prior to getting updated
with their normal colours and shapes. I believe this is due to the
initialisation processes running during this time taking all the processor
and disk time. The hard disk LED is again solid on during this phase. It
appears to me that their is a lot more disk activity now than prior to SP2.

19. All my normal start-up programs eventually started, Zone Alarm starting
very quickly, then AVG, which spends time on the task bar before ending up
on the tray, normally this is not displayed as it usually inactive for long
periods, at the moment it is being displayed in the tray even though it is
set not to display when inactive. I expect this to eventually disappear from
the normal permanent tray icons being displayed.

20. After about 3-5 from logon my Yahoo Messenger automatically started and
the icon was also displayed in the tray. I closed the main YM window and the
icon was displayed in the tray for a while but then disappeared very
strangely. I was then unable to open the YM window again as their was no
icon in the permanent or inactive part of the tray! I checked the processes
running and found that the Ypager process was still running (this is the
process that displays the YM window and should also display the YM icon in
the tray. I checked settings in the taskbar properties using custom settings
to set
the YM to permanently display. I rebooted and found that this time the icon
was not displayed at all in the tray even though the YM window opened
automatically on the desktop. Found the solution to this problem was to set
the "standby and wait until I connect to the internet" option true in YM.

To summarise the installation went very smoothly I thought and have found
the initial slow delays in rebooting to gaining access to program control on
the desktop went from about 5 mins initially to about 90 seconds after a few
reboots. Expect to see the hard disk LED on for long periods as SP2 is a
very disk intensive operation. I realise now I should have compacted the
disk prior to installation to reduce the amount of new file fragmentation,
but I will overcome this with my next disk defragmentation.

I will let SP2 stabilise for a while before I find out how to dump the
massive pre-SP2 backup that has been made. Don't worry I won't be doing this
in a hurry. :-)

Hope readers have found this detailed information of my experience in
installing SP2 helpful when they come to do their own SP2 installations. Any
further feedback welcome.

Joe

"White Knight" <thanks_but_no_thanks@nospam> wrote in message
news:...
>I have just successfully installed XP's SP2 on my pc.
>
> It takes quite a while I can tell you, even with a 512kbs broadband
> connection.
>
> My pc has an Athalon XP2000+ processor, 768MB RAM GeForce4 460 graphics
> card, 80GB Seagate hard disk & Asus A7N266-C motherboard.
>
> Just to give people an idea what to expect during the installation phase
> so
> they do not get unduly worried as to what is happening here is list of
> what
> to expect from the best of my recollection of the installation phase. I
> did
> not make notes of all aspects of the installation phases, but list my
> recollection of what happens.
>
> 1. The initial installation begins and downloads a relatively small amount
> of data from MS, this takes a few minutes.
>
> 2. Their is no modem activity, ie downloading for a long period, this had
> me
> quite worried for a while as I thought the installation had hung, but then
> on noticing the hard disk LED permanently lit I presume that a lot of
> reading/writing was going on in preparation for the 79.2MB download phase
> from MS.
>
> 3. The 79.2MB download phase began, this took a while, I did not time it
> but
> guess it was less than 30 mins with a std 512kbs BB connection.
>
> 4. A verification of the files downloaded takes place, this takes about
> 10-15mins
>
> 5. Construction of the SP2.cab file and possibly other required .cab
> installation files, can't remember what they're called but think some more
> .cab files were also created. (Wishing now I had documented the
> installation
> phase properly as it occurred so I could provide this feedback more
> accurately.) This takes a few mins.
>
> 6. Prior to the installation proper of SP2 the user is advised to back up
> the pc. But as this is a huge task on a pc with hundreds of MB's of files,
> I
> elected not to do this as I suspected that during the initial installation
> phase in step 1. that a system restore point had already been made. So
> unless you want to specifically backup your system then just proceed to
> the
> next phase of the installation. Just remembered it as this point that you
> are advised to shutdown all your programs. Well being the careful soul I
> am
> had all the major apps closed anyway as the initial download phase ran.
> But
> being now super careful, and not wanting this SP2 installation to screw
> up,
> I shutdown my firewall (ZoneAlarm Pro 5.1.011.000) and my antivirus
> program
> AVG 7.0 Professional (7.0.264 virus database 264.7.0). I also run a
> resident
> portion of Spybot V1.3 (Tea.exe) with the latest update dated 2004-08-20,
> I
> shut this process down using the taskmanager at this point. The main
> reason
> for shutting down this process is that is specifically flags up changes to
> the registry and I expected hundreds of those during the installation
> phase
> of SP2, so if you have installed this program, ensure you do shut it down
> at
> this point, otherwise you could be clicking on "Accept change" more times
> than you really would like to.
>
> 7. Well surprise surprise, what happens here, all the MS files that appear
> to be updated in SP2 get backed up, LOL. I'm not sure of the exact scope
> of
> the files that are automatically backed up or indeed where they go to, as
> I
> looked in the Windows temp folders and WU Update folder and so no files
> being dumped in there, also checked in windows\pchealth and nothing found
> there or on my d: drive, where my system restore points are stored. I
> suspect that ALL the updated files in SP2 are backed up in this phase,
> consequently this takes a long time. :-) Probably 15 mins at least.
>
> 8. The installation phase proper now begins. At last my pc is about to be
> inoculated with the MS equivalent to the MMR jab. (Yes it is safe, the WHO
> have said its safe, despite all the anecdotal evidence that it says it can
> give rise to autism and bowel disorder syndromes.) This is another fairly
> lengthy phase again probably at least 15 mins.
>
> 9. Registry is backed up, now I think this happened at this point, which
> me
> makes me now wonder why an automatic system restore point is not just
> created as I thought it was during the initial first step of the
> installation phases, as this effectively backs up the registry, hmmm, MS
> must have some method in their madness.
>
> 10. Registry changes are now made, guess all the registering of all those
> updated .dll files going on here. Relatively quick, abut 5-10 mins.
>
> 11. Installation tidy-up occurs now, more rock on solid lit hard disk LED
> phase occurring again here. Relatively quick, 3-5 mins.
>
> 12. You have successfully completed installation of SP2! (Whooaoaaa!)
> Click
> OK to restart your computer. (Small prayer to GOD recited at this point.)
>
> 13. Well would you believe it, step 13, could be ominous. My pc went
> through
> a system restart. Now there were differences from this point onwards.
>
> 14. During the initial reboot phase my pc shows the usual BIOS checks
> info,
> then the screen goes black for a while, then the familiar Windows XP logo
> page is displayed, but the running bars in the small window near the
> middle
> of the bottom of this page I'm sure used to be running green bars, now
> their
> running blue bars. (Blue is the colour of my true love eyes, in the
> morning
> when I rise, - hmm)
>
> 14. Arrggghhhh - Blue Screen (not of death though). At this point I guess
> all the files that could not be updated due to the old versions of core
> system critical files being protected by XP get updated. Does not take too
> long 2-4 mins.
>
> 15. Now I think it was at this point that the screen resolution changed
> from
> the standard VGA mode to a much higher resolution, looked like super VGA
> mode to me (1024x768).
>
> 16. Screens goes black again, for a while (less than a minute), now I see
> a
> running white bar at the lower part of this black screen. Now I did get
> this
> happen to me after some major update a long time ago, it may have been
> SP1,
> but after a while it stopped. At first I was concerned something was wrong
> with my video card. Wonder if this will now be a permanent feature of SP2.
>
> 17. Brief blank high resolution blue screen, then the familiar XP logon
> window I always get.
>
> 18. Normal logon, took quite a long time (2 mins) to get the normal
> desktop
> to be displayed. I have a lot of desktop icons on my pc, and during this
> phase the icons are shown in their non-normal mode prior to getting
> updated
> with their normal colours and shapes. I believe this is due to the
> initialisation processes running during this time taking all the processor
> and disk time. The hard disk LED is again solid on during this phase. It
> appears to me that their is a lot more disk activity now than prior to
> SP2.
>
> 19. All my normal start-up programs eventually started, Zone Alarm
> starting
> very quickly, then AVG, which spends time on the task bar before ending up
> on the tray, normally this is not displayed as it usually inactive for
> long
> periods, at the moment it is being displayed in the tray even though it is
> set not to display when inactive. I expect this to eventually disappear
> from
> the normal permanent tray icons being displayed.
>
> 20. After about 3-5 from logon my Yahoo Messenger automatically started
> and
> the icon was also displayed in the tray. I closed the main YM window and
> the
> icon was displayed in the tray for a while but then disappeared very
> strangely. I was then unable to open the YM window again as their was no
> icon in the permanent or inactive part of the tray! I checked the
> processes
> running and found that the Ypager process was still running (this is the
> process that displays the YM window and should also display the YM icon in
> the tray. I checked settings in the taskbar properties using custom
> settings to set
> the YM to permanently display. I rebooted and found that this time the
> icon
> was not displayed at all in the tray even though the YM window opened
> automatically on the desktop. Found the solution to this problem was to
> set the "standby and wait until I connect to the internet" option true in
> YM.
>
> To summarise the installation went very smoothly I thought and have found
> the initial slow delays in rebooting to gaining access to program control
> on the desktop went from about 5 mins initially to about 90 seconds after
> a few reboots. Expect to see the hard disk LED on for long periods as SP2
> is a very disk intensive operation. I realise now I should have compacted
> the disk prior to installation to reduce the amount of new file
> fragmentation, but I will overcome this with my next disk defragmentation.
>
> I will let SP2 stabilise for a while before I find out how to dump the
> massive pre-SP2 backup that has been made. Don't worry I won't be doing
> this in a hurry. :-)
>
> Hope readers have found this detailed information of my experience in
> installing SP2 helpful when they come to do their own SP2 installations.
> Any further feedback welcome.
>
> Joe
>

Addenda

One important thing I forgot to add is that my user account has
administrative rights, which is essential for SP2 installation - ensure you
have administrative rights in your user account or use an account that has
when installing SP2.

Joe

Hi White Knight! My experience was almost exactly the same as you describe.
Well done on remebering so much! I've got a little utillity called
spacemonger which gives a very fast map of all the files on a drive and have
just posted ("Win XP Home Edition was SP1 now SP2" 8/26/2004, about 15 slots
above your message) in which I've said where it seems to be showing SP2 has
maybe put great hunks of "backup" type stuff - what to do with it all I do
not know - but surely we don't have to keep it all for ever do we!

"Albert" <> wrote in message
news:15CDD851-11AC-4A81-9338-...
> Hi White Knight! My experience was almost exactly the same as you
> describe.
> Well done on remebering so much! I've got a little utillity called
> spacemonger which gives a very fast map of all the files on a drive and
> have
> just posted ("Win XP Home Edition was SP1 now SP2" 8/26/2004, about 15
> slots
> above your message) in which I've said where it seems to be showing SP2
> has
> maybe put great hunks of "backup" type stuff - what to do with it all I do
> not know - but surely we don't have to keep it all for ever do we!

Hi Albert,

See my reply in your post "Win XP Home Edition was SP1 now SP2" 8/26/2004.

Joe