Cross Your Fingers...Installing Vista SP1

Posted By : todd sharp Posted At : March 21, 2008 10:36 AM Posted In: Off Topic, Misc

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So I've just clicked 'Install' on Vista SP1 on my desktop. I've been told to step away from the machine for an hour while it 'does it's thing'. Good thing I've got my laptop here with me. Amazingly (or not so much) Microsoft has made it quite a quest to get the damn thing in the first place.

We shall see. Here's hoping for the magic bullet...

Comments (14)

Joshua Cyr's Gravatar An hour? Man I was going to do that at lunch for my home pc... maybe I wait for the weekend.

Sam Farmer's Gravatar Are you hoping this magic bullet turns your computer into a Mac running Leopard? Heh.

todd sharp's Gravatar Well it's still runnin, so it looks like they weren't lying... :)

todd sharp's Gravatar Good one Sam :) I'm quite happy with Vista, but I've heard the SP takes care of some annoying quirks.

Charlie Arehart's Gravatar Well, I did the install during a commute on Wednesday. It really was done in about 20 minutes. I'll add that my install of Vista was only a few weeks old, so not too much gunk for it to update, perhaps. Just sayin'.

So far, so good. No obvious differences to me yet. I had read that the search button in the start bar would be gone, because of an MS/Google lawsuit, but it's still there. (I kind of which it was gone. I'm so used to hitting the windows key and then the first character of a program to start in the start menu, but now instead in Vista it does a search. I suppose that's better for most, but I wish I could disable it. Sadly, even in SP1, it doesn't appear you can.)

todd sharp's Gravatar Update done...1.5 hours...

Now to see what - if anything - is changed/better.

todd sharp's Gravatar Wow...immediately I notice that Vista now shows all 4gb RAM available for use instead of 3.25gb.

todd sharp's Gravatar Charlie,

What about right clicking on taskbar - Properties - Start Menu. If you switch to Classic Start Menu does that solve your problem?

Dan Wilso's Gravatar I'm eager to hear how you find the new sp1... I'm avoiding it for now... Vista has been terrible enough on its own.

Charlie Arehart's Gravatar Thanks, Todd. You know, before I sent the note I even looked in the properties, but I was looking for a way to turn off search. I completely missed the "classic" option. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. :-)

Douglas Knudsen's Gravatar did the update a few days back. Took two tries, first install died and it automagically rolled back, kind of nice that even though it bombed. Second try it all went well and yes, it took like 1.5 hours. And I see 4GB too now, but not much other differences. File copy is now tolerably speedy.

Charlie, did you use Window Update to do this? I suspect so. Window Update only pushes what it deems you need out of SP1. SP1 is a cumulative batch of hotfixes on top of things. I went with the 400GB+ install, it takes 1+ hours but has it all...just in case.

DK

todd sharp's Gravatar I think you meant 400mb :D

Dale Fraser's Gravatar I installed it a love it.

The most notable difference is file copying speed.

For example, I moved a big file from one area of the disk to another, it happened instantly, so much so I had to check it really did it. The old Vista would have sat there for a while working out how long it would take.

I also uninstalled the WOW trial, that happened so quickly again, I thought it must have just left the files, nope they were all gone.

So anyone who hasn't installed it, I would recommend you do so.

Syed's Gravatar I installed it too, couple of days ago. I did notice some changes in administration tasks, but other than that, performance wise is little better.