XP SP3 & WU woes, and fix!

[Fat Tone]

I recently built a new PC with a new XP SP2 CD, and installed the basic drivers.
Tonight I decided to finish off (basically add Office 2K3), and as it has been a couple of weeks started by doing MS update first, which offered me SP3 and I duly installed it.

Trouble was after the install of SP3 the machine decided to constantly reboot.

Ah well, it was a bare install, so I wiped and started again. Did a MS Update and installed SP3. All good so far.

BUT, now MS update and autoupdates download but fail to install any further offerings.

Turns out this is because the updater supercedes SP2 and isn't included in SP3.

For a fix see http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=33560 and for more background see http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r204...-XP-SP3-Loaded

That fix worked perfectly for me with the very minor point that windowsupdate didn't auto-redirect to microsoftupdate the first time, but was fine after that.

[dZeus]

I recently built a new PC with a new XP SP2 CD, and installed the basic drivers.
Tonight I decided to finish off (basically add Office 2K3), and as it has been a couple of weeks started by doing MS update first, which offered me SP3 and I duly installed it.

Trouble was after the install of SP3 the machine decided to constantly reboot.

Ah well, it was a bare install, so I wiped and started again. Did a MS Update and installed SP3. All good so far.

BUT, now MS update and autoupdates download but fail to install any further offerings.

Turns out this is because the updater supercedes SP2 and isn't included in SP3.

For a fix see http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=33560 and for more background see http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r204...-XP-SP3-Loaded

That fix worked perfectly for me with the very minor point that windowsupdate didn't auto-redirect to microsoftupdate the first time, but was fine after that.

so the lessons is: always install from a slipstreamed medium to avoid these sort of problems? there are some nice MSDN slipstreamed versions floating around if you want the source to be impeccable

[Adis]

always install from a slipstreamed medium to avoid these sort of problems

Agree.

Use nLite to easily integrate SP into Windows installation:

http://www.nliteos.com

[Fat Tone]

I absolutely take the point that a slipstream is best, but based on the writings on those links I don't see how it would avoid this particular problem if the WU update isn't included in the SPs.

What I think could have avoided the problem in my case is if I had allowed WU to update itself before then updating to MU (and then applying SP3).

[Gurm]

Do what I did. Go out, spend $225 in hardware to soup up your machine so it can run Vista 64, and forget all about these XP issues.

[Chucky Cheese]

Gurm,

i just did a fresh install of vista 64...and i'm lovin it !!!

wow...power management works!...correctly!

i have a question though concerning my raid 0 setup with the marvell 6.xx built-in controller...under vista 32 i set it up as a gpt disk...all was well, i couldn't use it under xp, but hey, i was ok with it!...vista 64 would not allow those drives to be used without creating the raid itself and forcing me to initialize them and format them...i had backed up my stuff onto the network so no problems...once i relized that there was no way out, i decided to boot my xp disk and create the raid setup with the "lowest" version so that the more "advanced os" could still use them...no such luck...after doing this i booted my vista 32 and 64 and had to "import foreign disk", i expected this once but after every reboot, i had to do this...wth?

i have set it up now with vista 64 and i am back in the same position i was in with vista 32, which i have no intention of ever booting again, and i don't care if xp can see it...as long as it doesn't corrupt it by some freak accident.

CC

[Gurm]

Yeah for that you might simply be at the mercy of the driver manufacturers. MS has leaned pretty heavily on vendors to make their Vista64 drivers rock solid, but clearly it's not ALWAYS with the same feature set or compatibility.

[Chucky Cheese]

well...i was willing to invest a little time in setting it up with xp but having my data backed up made me bolder and wanting to just get on with vista 64...in total

i forgot to mention that i even tried updating the hardware profile in both versions of vista

CC

[Gurm]

Drivers are the sticking point. Everything else runs great in a Windows XP image on VMWare Workstation 6... which has to be one of the more brilliant pieces of software EVER.

[Fat Tone]

Update:

Got the same prob on another system (from before I created a slipstreamed CD). The tool at the original link has been removed. Here's a working solution, taken from Mark Dormer on msmvps.com:

If you install XP SP3 on a clean SP2 box Windows Update will no longer work.
Unless you have the newer Windows Update Agent 3.0 your stuck in a hole
There is no way to get it via AU or WU or MU only a manual installation can resolve the issue

1. Download the new Agent (but do not Run it yet) to your Desktop (so you can find it below) :

X86 Version: http://download.windowsupdate.com/Wi...gent30-x86.exe

2. Start, Run, CMD

In the black box:

net stop wuauserv
"%userprofile%\Desktop\WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe" /wuforce (don't forget the quotation marks)
net start wuauserv exit

[Last line not strictly necessary as the service appears to restart with line 2].

[UtwigMU]

Yes this occurs every system and this is the only required fix (agent with /wuaforce switch).