Highliner
07-15-2009, 04:53 AM
Just wanted to get my two cents in about the fear and dilemma of installing/not installing service pack 2 for Windows Vista. I waited several weeks before making my decision, which basically came down to two choices: should I not install service pack 2 and not fix something that isn't broken (since SP-1 for Vista was running just fine), or should I install service pack 2 for Vista hoping that it will free up some hard disk space and somehow making things more efficient on my machine.
What dissuaded me initially were stories of computers that would not take the Service Pack 2; their system would hang midstream, or boot-up times were ridiculously long (3+minutes), or all of a sudden this driver or that would stop working.
What convinced me was that since my machine is relatively new (AMD K6 dual core 4400+, 1GB SDRAM, 250GB hard drive, 32-bit, 2.3Ghz), that I would do the install of SP-2 for Vista with the understanding that if it ate up compute cycles or otherwise caused my machine to stop working correctly, I could just uninstall it. That, or if I suddenly found myself left with only a couple hundred MB's of RAM left for applications after Windows, notorious as a memory hog, took whatever it needed.
All went well. The download of the stand-alone installation package (348 MB) took barely eight minutes. Based on what I read about installation issues, I installed KB947821-v4x86, which is some kind of pre-installer and issue-fixer, for lack of a better term. So I ran that, which took about ten minutes, and everything seemed fine, no problems after (although I really don't know the details of what it did), and I believe that this updater is what made the installation of SP-2 for Vista go so smooothly. It took precisely 18 minutes to install, and the machine only rebooted once. Start-up time from a cold shut down is barely 50 seconds, and I have had no problems with hanging or application crashes or with the hybernation feature. So whatever Vista SP-2 did, it is working fine so far, and with my system restore feature turned off and Norton gone, my system is at hyper-efficiency and just flies through every application I run. Web surfing at 10MB cable connection is so fast it's unbelievable, download rates are running 500K+ per second, wow--I love it!
Microsoft is beginning to reinstill confidence in their operating systems once more. I only hope that they have better themeware built in the next time around, like Windows 98 did.
What dissuaded me initially were stories of computers that would not take the Service Pack 2; their system would hang midstream, or boot-up times were ridiculously long (3+minutes), or all of a sudden this driver or that would stop working.
What convinced me was that since my machine is relatively new (AMD K6 dual core 4400+, 1GB SDRAM, 250GB hard drive, 32-bit, 2.3Ghz), that I would do the install of SP-2 for Vista with the understanding that if it ate up compute cycles or otherwise caused my machine to stop working correctly, I could just uninstall it. That, or if I suddenly found myself left with only a couple hundred MB's of RAM left for applications after Windows, notorious as a memory hog, took whatever it needed.
All went well. The download of the stand-alone installation package (348 MB) took barely eight minutes. Based on what I read about installation issues, I installed KB947821-v4x86, which is some kind of pre-installer and issue-fixer, for lack of a better term. So I ran that, which took about ten minutes, and everything seemed fine, no problems after (although I really don't know the details of what it did), and I believe that this updater is what made the installation of SP-2 for Vista go so smooothly. It took precisely 18 minutes to install, and the machine only rebooted once. Start-up time from a cold shut down is barely 50 seconds, and I have had no problems with hanging or application crashes or with the hybernation feature. So whatever Vista SP-2 did, it is working fine so far, and with my system restore feature turned off and Norton gone, my system is at hyper-efficiency and just flies through every application I run. Web surfing at 10MB cable connection is so fast it's unbelievable, download rates are running 500K+ per second, wow--I love it!
Microsoft is beginning to reinstill confidence in their operating systems once more. I only hope that they have better themeware built in the next time around, like Windows 98 did.