Warning! Vista Home Premium and Windows Update

[poppafred]

If you are running Vista Home Premium 64 bit and you get a prompt from Windows Update for Service Pack 2 - Do NOT install it!

Apparently, the Vista Service Pack 2 being offered by Update at this time will not properly install on Vista Home Premium 64 bit and you can lock yourself out of your computer. It happened to me and has taken a week to resolve. I had to contact Microsoft Support by chat and it has taken over 4 full hours to rerpair my operating system and install the correct update.

Download the stand-alone 5 language SP2 and install that.

It may be 577mb but it works.

[MaxMan1986]

I didn't have this problem; the service pack installed smoothly and the computer has been working fine since then.

[poppafred]

Are you running 32 bit or 64 bit Vista? Mine is 64 bit and I believe the update being offered is 32 bit.

[Dak48]

Poppy-****, I run both 32- bit and 64-bit Vista and I haven't had problems with either service pack.

[poppafred]

Then you explain why a 64 bit 2 week old laptop suddenly stops working after installing the update.

[Dak48]

Originally Posted by poppafred

Then you explain why a 64 bit 2 week old laptop suddenly stops working after installing the update.

Sure, bring it to Nebraska and I'll put it on the bench and check it out. Are you willing to pay for my time?

In all seriousness, did the service pack update bomb anywhere along the way? I know one of the pack's had an issue bombing on .net extensions and I had to run it (the sp install) a second time for it to install correctly. At what point does the laptop stop working? Does it boot? Can you boot into safe mode?

[Dak48]

Giving this further thought, do you have anything plugged into the USB ports? Anything exotic attached to the notebook (by exotic, I mean hardware that did not come with the notebook)? Is the processor AMD or Intel? Give us as much information as possible about the specs of your machine.

[poppafred]

Nothing connected, nothing running.

Ran the Windows update version first and it took only 10 minutes to complete. Went through the Microsoft assisted manual reinstallation. Downloaded the stand-alone version (577 megs) while talking to the Microsoft support tech and transfered it to the laptop with a flash drive. Removed the flash drive and did an install of the stand-alone version. It took almost 2 hours. That was my first clue the on-line Update was either a corrupt file or it was offering me the 32 bit version. Appeared to install correctly, did the restart for step three and seemed to be working fine. Unplugged the power supply and shut down in the hobby room and carried it to the living room. Still nothing plugged into any USB ports. Had even gone so far as to uninstall iTunes before doing the stand-alone update. The laptop completed the power on self test and loaded Vista for about 30 seconds and then would go to a blue screen and attempt to reboot. Would hang during the restart which required a forced power off before you could try again.

The only new software on the computer was SP2.

Now that I have the new hard drive installed, I might install Windows 7 when the DVD arrives this week. Without the Recovery partition available, I had nothing to work with after the failure and am still leery of even trying windows 7.

[lgentle]

Sounds like you bought the laptop from a store (Best Buy, etc.)? We bought my wife's Dell from Best Buy and have the same issue. If the HDD ever goes, say bye-bye to your "recovery media". I hate it that Dell (don't know about other manufacturers) doesn't include physical media with their equipment bought from a store. Luckily, I got my hands on a Dell Vista Home Premium 64-bit disc.

[mike_s104]

From reading this post and your other Vista "WARNING" post, you're apparently, from what I can tell, doing something wrong or installing something that you probably shouldn't on Vista. If you NEED to run something old that's not going to run correctly on Vista, you may want to follow my suggestions on your other post. Vista isn't bad (on newer hardware) only the users are bad.

[Dak48]

I did some digging on this yesterday to kill a little bit of time, and see if I could better familiarize myself with your system issue. I really didn't find much information that jumped right out at me, but I did notice one thing. Language packs. I didn't install them (there's like 35) on my system, and the SP likes to install all of them automatically for some reason.

So here's my suggestion, uninstall all the foreign language packs, then mark them in Windows Update so that they will not download at all. The only other issue I can think of is the .NET issue that I had, which was fixed by reinstalling those extensions from Microsoft Update.

And just for record, someone said that Dell didn't provide recovery disks. That's right, it costs them money to produce the recovery disks. However, if you look in the start menu, some where will be a menu selection to create your own recovery disks. I always recommend that these be done, and Best Buy/Geek Squad recently had been taken to tasks for open boxes, creating said disks, resealing the box and adding $50 to the shelf price of the item. My point is, just because the disks aren't provided, doesn't mean there isn't a way to create them, in after a few boots of my Dell notebook, I was prompted to make said recovery disks, or disable the popup message.

Good luck, I hope you get it all resolved soon, it's frustrating I know.

[djxman]

I have to disagree with that. I bought my dell from walmart and it came with a complete restore kit. I have Vista disk and driver disk. So I think best buy is just cheap or they are taking them out to sell them for extra money.

[poppafred]

Bought it directly from Dell. It's a Studio 1737, not an out of date system. Only thing added was Windows Update supplied software and Avast antivirus. Only language pack installed was English. I couldn't have done anything wrong, all I did was double click the stand alone Vist x64 SP2 file on the desktop and sit back and watch.

[mike_s104]

Originally Posted by poppafred

Bought it directly from Dell. It's a Studio 1737, not an out of date system. Only thing added was Windows Update supplied software and Avast antivirus. Only language pack installed was English. I couldn't have done anything wrong, all I did was double click the stand alone Vist x64 SP2 file on the desktop and sit back and watch.

Had you installed anything before that? Most AV software manufactures suggest to disable or uninstall their software before installing any service pack to the OS. This was common way back to Windows 2000. Did you do that? If not, this might be the issue you were running into.

[lgentle]

However, if you look in the start menu, some where will be a menu selection to create your own recovery disks.

Nope, not here. Tried looking for a way to create discs, but, could not find anyway. Only thing I could do was ghost the WHOLE friggin' HDD. It is a HUUUGGGGEEEEE image!

I DID have that option, which I did do on a friends HP laptop. I let it create the DVD+R DL version.

[poppafred]

Originally Posted by mike_s104

Had you installed anything before that? Most AV software manufactures suggest to disable or uninstall their software before installing any service pack to the OS. This was common way back to Windows 2000. Did you do that? If not, this might be the issue you were running into.

So Avast thought SP2 was a virus?

Maybe it is smarter than I gave it credit!

[mike_s104]

Originally Posted by poppafred

So Avast thought SP2 was a virus?

Maybe it is smarter than I gave it credit!

Not really, but rather something doing major changes to the PC...which is what a service pack is.