Microsoft's Windows 7 Service Pack 1 does... something

washingtonpost ^ | 02/23/2011 | Rob Pegoraro

[JoeProBono]

Microsoft shipped the most important update yet to Windows 7 yesterday--or so you'd conclude from the Redmond, Wash., company's home-page promotion of this Service Pack 1 patch. Its name would suggest the same; Microsoft ranks Service Packs among its most comprehensive, sweeping fixes, issued only two or three times for an edition of Windows.

Duly motivated, I set out to install Windows 7's "SP1" on a Dell notebook yesterday afternoon. Although the initial dialog in Windows Update suggested this download could run anywhere from 44 to 533.1 megabytes......

[JoeProBono]

[rahbert]

ritual trashing of MS begins in 3..2..1..

[justlurking]

It failed for an unknown reason when I tried to install it from Windows Update. And no, it wasn't "unknown" because I didn't note the reason: the message said: "failed for an unknown reason".

I finally went to the Microsoft website and downloaded SP1 myself, then installed it. It was painless after that.

[illiac]

I installed it, and much like the article, do not notice anything different....

[max americana]

>Windows Update took about 30 minutes to install SP1, after which the computer spent another 24 minutes in a post-reboot “configuring” session. >

and here I am with my XP SP3 snickering..

[bcsco]

I just bought my first PC with Windows 7 last week. The first three days was nothing but updates being installed. I’ve finally turned off automatic updates.

[justlurking]

and here I am with my XP SP3 snickering..

I have XP on two computers, and Windows 7 on two others (one 32-bit, the other 64-bit).

I haven't upgraded the 32-bit Win7 system yet, though. Maybe Windows update will work better on that one.

[Paladin2]

M$ AND Google are EVIL!

[DonaldC]

I don’t mind bashing M$ from time to time myself, but if they release fixes, it is not a good idea not to install them. Just schedule it to happen at 2 in the morning or something and let it do its thing.

[JoeProBono]

Windows 7, like it’s predecessors XP and Vista lets you choose whether you want to turn on automatic updating or disable it. It is usually recommended to turn on Windows automatic updates as normally they may include important security and vulnerability fixes.

[Ingtar]

Discounting the background download, the service pack took me about 5-7 minutes to install, and perhaps 4 on start up. It was much less painful than service packs for XP were.

[Lx]

I love Windows 7. Its 64 bit support is much better than Vista’s. My SP1 update went in at the beginning of February and I didn’t notice anything, it was already stable and fast.

A lot of times these service packs opposed to individual patches, address several bugs, performance and better drivers so a lot of times you don’t notice anything if it was already stable.

[bcsco]

I keep my auto update turned off. Once a month or so I’ll turn it on and allow the updates. I want it on my schedule; not theirs. Nor do I want the all-too-often notices.

[JoeProBono]

Hope you’re protecting your computer in the mean time;-{)

http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus

http://www.zonealarm.com/security/en-us/free-upgrade-security-suite-zonealarm-firewall-search.htm?cid=W200002&source=Google-US-Brand&medium=Firewall&content=COPYTrusted-LPfreefirewall&term=ZoneAlarm%20free&campaign=Brand+FreeFirewall

[bcsco]

Avast!, Zone Alarm, behind a physical firewall as well, and Malwarebytes.

[JoeProBono]

;-{)

[JoeProBono]

[Durus]

Microsoft releases patches once a month unless there is a critical exploit they need to patch. That has only happened a couple of times in the last few years.

[West Texas Chuck]

When I tried to install SP1 for Win7 this morning the wheels came off. It sat there in shutdown mode for an hour, stuck on 30% complete. I did the unthinkable and pushed the power button, ‘course it came back up pissed off and went to the Configuring Windows screen and has been sitting there for half an hour. Something is wrong, if it hangs up like this for another half an hour I’ll boot the Recovery disk and hope for the best.

[West Texas Chuck]

Stupid thing hung up again so I powered down and booted from the Recovery disk, did Startup Repair, it finished and rebooted. Then it came up to the Configuring Windows screen again but this time the Service Pack started progressing and finally finished, so I guess I’m back in bidness.

I have a lot of experience with this stuff, I shudder to think what hell a noob would have gone through since the SP1 appeared to blow the box up. That’s rare, the updates process is usually very reliable but they have some problem with this service pack, at least on my HP p6000, which is only a couple months old, I would expect it to have run smoother than it did.