SP1.1 & Windows Hotfix

Was 1.0 actually released? I thought it was put out as a release candidate for broader testing and then quickly pulled back.

It was on EV for a long time, but was officially released recently. I have the 1.0 official release running now, but trying to install 1.1 is a PITA.

I also had an equally frustrating time.... And I also do not know what that file is. If it is useful it is certainly not installed unless the other exe installs it automatically. I have not had any apparent serious issues, but would live to know if that is important. Why they cannot include a two line read my to explain is beyond me.

Daniel

Note The Windowsxp-kb893048-x86-enu.exe file is the hotfix installer. The Windowsxp-kb893048-x86-symbols-enu.exe file is the installer for the hotfix symbol file that is named Msi.pdb. You do not have to install the Windowsxp-kb893048-x86-symbols-enu.exe file

Apparently you don't need this file.

I ran the hotfix again and rebooted. I got to insert the 2nd CD during the update and got another error. Strange thing is that SW icons and the Help>About state SP01.1. So I don't know if it's properly patched or not.

I would go back to 0.0 and start over, but I fear I may not be able to pach

0.0 now either.

I just got off the phone with a helpful M$ (Germany) support person, and they also could not find a rhyme or reason for the symbols_ENU file.

were you updating from SP0.0, or EV1.0? I only needed the first SW install disk, and it when fine... if a little slow.

Maybe I start over also... not really wanting to do that, but I rather have clean slow and stable than fast and flakey.

Daniel

A tip that's saved my sorry ass in the past: Get Norton Ghost.

Before installing any major SP --whether Windows or an important application-- clone or backup your system drive. Then you can experiment away and laugh at just how well some of these SP's manage to mangle systems rather than improve them.

If anything goes wrong you can restore your entire system back to where it was prior to any patches being applied. It takes minutes rather than days. If starting from scratch and using the conventional raw install approach, it takes me about two weeks to reload and configure OS and applications on my main development machine. I learned my lesson after having to endure a couple of complete system rebuilds the hard way. Now all our development machines get their system drives "ghosted" regularly to an external USB backup drive. You can literally roll back any machine to any one of these real "restore points" with relative ease, over lunch...and you can even go out for lunch!!!

-Martin

I understand the roll back before an installation being an advantage but what about once your system is just buggy and even the baackup you have is buggy. Because when you backup prior to that installation you didnt realize you already had a glitch in windows somewhere. Seriously I am not being a smart ass I am just wondering because I think it is a good idea but not sure how to make it work. \

Do you keep a backup of your system from when you first installed windows and had all the necessary core software like SolidWorks etc. So then if you roll back to this state you have to remeber to apply everything as far as patches etc. How many backup versions do you keep? I suppose that it still saves time.

...

Valid points.

First a philosophy: Disk space is cheap. Data loss or system failures leading to rebuilds are expensive.

Today, about US$1 per GB. Just saw some 400GB drives for under $400. Being that a nicely loaded system drive backup might be about 10GB (with mild compression, less if using more compression), you can keep lots of backup on an external (or internal) drive to be used only for that purpose.

It is, of course, important to know that your system is healthy. When I build a new machine I do so without any connection to the network. Tried and proven services packs (whether OS or application) are all burned to CDs and have been fully virus-scanned prior to be placed in the engineering library drive.

Before any application is installed I like to install the virus checking and firewall software. I used to use Symantec but stopped because we had a case of both anti-virus and firewall shutting down without announcement on a notebook. That machine stayed on the network for about a week before we noticed that it had been completely trashed by a virus. So, although I highly recommend Symantec Ghost, after many, many years of using their AV software I now stay away from it. Currently using McAfee.

Anyhow, depending on the machine, we might do a ghost backup immediately after the OS and basic apps are up and running.

Then, of course, all the apps and patches are installed. Depending on what you know about them you go as far and wide as you want and then do another backup. That's your "base configuration".

Beyond that, it's up to you how you want to manage it. I never keep data on the system drive. Every machine has two drives. Data files are kept on the second drive. The system drive can shred itself to pieces for all I care, no valuable data will be lost.

Since ghosting a drive is so simple, you could consider doing it on a weekly basis. Like I said, over lunch or overnight. It truly is up to you just how far you want to take it. Ghost will do incremental backups, but I just don't like the idea.

Oh, yes, then there's the backup of a backup question. For that I refer you to the start of this post: Disk space is cheap. Get another 400GB drive for secondary backup. Disconnect and turn off when not backing-up or restoring.

-Martin

Are there other "free" ghost programs? I have past experiences with norton that make me hesitant to consider their products.

On the Mac there is a great product called Carbon Copy Cloner - amazingly useful- especially because you can boot off the copy from an external (or second internal) firewire drive. Very good solution if you want to test on another drive first, or simply clone back to your primary drive.

Is that more or less what norton ghost does?

Daniel

I guess I'm not alone on this one. I do have to say that the latest version of Ghost (9.0) is pretty nice. I don't use their firewall or anti-virus any more.

Part of the reason for my problems (AV and Firewall shut down without warning) I think may be related to this ridiculous MS-style activation business everyone is copying now. I do think it's backfiring on them though. I'm pefectly happy and willing to buy and pay for good bug-free software. Hell, we spend thousands of dollars on very expensive full-of-bugs-pain-in-the-ass software.

I've seen at least two perfectly legitimate, paid for, WinXP PRO systems that had been activated/authorized/registered for almost a year all of a sudden pop-up a window saying that you only have three days until the system is disabled due to a need to activate! The good news is that clicking on the "Activate Now" button got the machine re-activated. Can you imagine that happening on a mission-critical machine? I think this is what happened with Norton's AV/Firewall, except that they just shut down and, as a result, a machine got trashed by virus attacks.

So, this whole idea of linking my very ability to use the software to some tenuous registration/activation mechanism that is unreliable at best...anyhow, off-topic, don't get me started.

I think there's a way to boot off a ghost image. I don't know 'cause I've only really used it for backup. I know that you can mount an image as a drive and pull out individual files. That's very useful.

I don't know if there are freeware or shareware programs out there. Maybe in the Linux world? You'd have to setup a dual-boot machine and drive-clone from Linux. Probably not as much of a PITA as it may sound. Aside from Linux, I'm not sure I'd want to trust my backups to freeware software. If anything because long-term support may be just an interesting concept in that world.

-Martin

Just so everyone knows, the .pdb file is a debugging symbol database file that is used for, well, debugging. It's kind of odd that they would supply this file. It may have some use to people developing with the Windows Installer trying to test their installer in debug mode, but other than that it's pretty useless.

Jonathan Anderson

Hello All To save some people allot of time. Here is what I got from Microsoft for XP Pro SP2. Copy and paste location into your Browser and download. The password changes to the alternate on

2-16 and is good until 2-23. They advised to make a backup of everything(I didn't). After unzipping you get (2) files. Dble click the x86.enu .exe file, NOT the one with "symbols" in the name. After installing the hotfix, install the SWX SPwhatever as you normally would. I have done 2 machines (1) had 1.0ev (AMD64)and (1) had 0.1 (P-4 3.2gz)with no problems. I hope this is clear enough. Good luck

Mike Eckstein

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The hot fix for your issue has been packaged and placed on an HTTP site for you to download.

WARNING: This fix is not publicly available through the Microsoft website as it has not gone through full Microsoft regression testing. If you would like confirmation that this fix is designed to address your specific problem, or if you would like to confirm whether there are any special compatibility or installation issues associated with this fix, you are encouraged to speak to a Support Professional in Product Support Services.

The package is password protected so be sure to enter the appropriate password for each package. To ensure the right password is provided cut and paste the password from this mail.

NOTE: Passwords expire every 7 days so download the package within that period to insure you can extract the files. If you receive two passwords it means you are receiving the fix during a password change cycle. Use the second password if you download after the indicated password change date.

Package:

----------------------------------------------------------- KB Article Number(s): 893048 Language: English Platform: i386 Location:(

Password: QDBO!@p Password Changes On: 02/16/2005 Next Password: dzYF+!Q

NOTE: Be sure to include all text between '(' and ')' when navigating to this hot fix location!

Thanks!

I actually have a copy of SP1.0. I don't have the Spanish help though.

Blaaaah. Windows is just more complicated. I certainly do not trust most software vendors with freeware on windows. Usually laden with spyware or adware. On OSX it is different because you simply do not have sneaky spyware installations you can get on windows. So I trust more freeware on that platform.

Regarding Norton, my experience has been (again on the mac side) that if someone had problems with their computer, it usually traced back to an installation of norton antivirus or some other of their products. Remove it and all would be well again. I also really really dislike the auto authorization programs. Probably because windows is so intrusive and treats the user as stupid (or is it that it makes the user stupid? hmmmm).

Some examples:

-Unplug your network connection - get a message telling you your network has been disconnected! Doh! I did it!

- McAfee antivirus auto update just does it without asking - like so many windows programs... so I may be in the middle of something important, and the machine slows down (or sometimes craps out) because it is doing something behind my back without telling me, and then has the nerve to put up a message telling me it was sneaking around and it is done, and would I like to continue what I was doing!!! AND you have to click the button, or the message window does not go away! OK; I did check the auto-update feature, but it would be better to 1. ask before doing the update to give me the option to delay it, 2. tell me it is done and go away! why must I do something after it has done what it wants!!!

OK... Wednesday morning OT rant...... so sorry. :-)

Daniel

"daniel" a écrit dans le message de news:42131b95 snipped-for-privacy@news.bluewin.ch...

For this one, install a firewall (ZoneAlarm?) and do not allow automatic connection to those.

My .01 Eu

JM

Thanks JM,

but in the first example, it is windows looking at it's own hardware connections, so I think a firewall will not work. Also, for mcafee, it needs to connect to get the updates ( if I want to have the latest protection... which for PCs is a necessity. I just object the their thinking about how to do it, and how and when to notify the user. Anyway, I do have firewalls, both hardware and soft.

I guess my point is the general Windows logic:

1. don't tell me if I don't need to know about it
2. don't do something when I am working that may mess with what I am doing (PCs get very slow multitasking - and prone to crash)
3. don't tell me about what you did after you did it if I cannot do anything about it... and then wait until I confirm it is OK for me to continue what I was doing before you interrupted me. Huh?

I can go on and on, but I shouldn't.

One last point: have a look at a windows KB article, like the one for this hot fix issue. Now have a look at an apple KB article. Which tells you what you REALLY need to know.

The hot fix example:

semi-random apple example: My .01 CHF (0.00646610 EUR)

;-)

Daniel

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What a MESS! Thank you Michael Eckstein, for your help. No wonder SW just provided the phone number!

ca

WHAT is the Password?