SP1

[Dick Mahar]

I have WIN 7 64 bit, premium. Now every day I am offered an opportunity to
download SPI. After an unpleasant experience with SP2 in WIN XP, I am
apprehensive. All my other upates are installed, and my OS is apparently
working just about perfectly. Is there any real reason to install SP? I
have always been a believer in "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Also, will it be possible to remove SP1 easily if I for some reason want
to?.............TIA

 

[Char Jackson]

I have WIN 7 64 bit, premium. Now every day I am offered an opportunity to
download SPI. After an unpleasant experience with SP2 in WIN XP, I am
apprehensive. All my other upates are installed, and my OS is apparently
working just about perfectly. Is there any real reason to install SP? I
have always been a believer in "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Also, will it be possible to remove SP1 easily if I for some reason want
to?.............TIA

Make an image of your current system and store it somewhere safe.
Actually, before you store it, see if it works. Then attempt the SP1
installation, which will in all likelihood work fine. If anything
radical happens, simply restore the image you just created.

 

[Big Steel]

I have WIN 7 64 bit, premium. Now every day I am offered an opportunity
to download SPI. After an unpleasant experience with SP2 in WIN XP, I am
apprehensive. All my other upates are installed, and my OS is apparently
working just about perfectly. Is there any real reason to install SP? I
have always been a believer in "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Also, will it be possible to remove SP1 easily if I for some reason want
to?.............TIA

The commonsense rule is to install all updates marked important, and SP(s).

<http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/whats-included-in-windows-7-service-pack-1-sp1>

 

[Bob I]

You must have been the owner of one of those HP/AMD boxes with the Intel
drivers. It was "broke" before you installed SP2.

 

[Stan Brown]

Make an image of your current system and store it somewhere safe.
Actually, before you store it, see if it works.

This is standard advice, but I've never understood how one can "see
if it works". Can you explain, briefly? I don't imagine you mean to
restore it to the computer, because if it doesn't work you'll then
have a non-working computer and a useless backup.

 

[Tester]

This is standard advice, but I've never understood how one can "see
if it works". Can you explain, briefly?

Acronis has a facility to test the integrity of your backups without
performing restoration on your system.

hth

 

[Nil]

This is standard advice, but I've never understood how one can
"see if it works". Can you explain, briefly? I don't imagine you
mean to restore it to the computer, because if it doesn't work
you'll then have a non-working computer and a useless backup.

It's more like, "see if it DOESN'T work." If your computer exhibits
critical negative side effects from the service pack, you can restore
your computer to its former state from the image you made.

 

[Char Jackson]

This is standard advice, but I've never understood how one can "see
if it works". Can you explain, briefly? I don't imagine you mean to
restore it to the computer, because if it doesn't work you'll then
have a non-working computer and a useless backup.

Maybe I'm weird, but I have a bunch of spare hard drives laying
around, mostly smaller ones that have been replaced by larger ones.
Anyway, if I'm using an imaging program for the first time I'll grab
an old drive, slap it in, restore to it, and see what happens.

You're right, I didn't mean restore it to the drive where it came
from, as that could leave you vulnerable.

 

[Char Jackson]

Acronis has a facility to test the integrity of your backups without
performing restoration on your system.

While an integrity check that passes is somewhat comforting, it's not
the same as doing an actual restore.

 

[Stan Brown]

While an integrity check that passes is somewhat comforting, it's not
the same as doing an actual restore.

I agree. Again, can you explain how one can "see if it works",
without doing a restore and thus overwriting a known good system with
a probably good system?

 

[Stan Brown]

Maybe I'm weird, but I have a bunch of spare hard drives laying
around, mostly smaller ones that have been replaced by larger ones.
Anyway, if I'm using an imaging program for the first time I'll grab
an old drive, slap it in, restore to it, and see what happens.

You're right, I didn't mean restore it to the drive where it came
from, as that could leave you vulnerable.

Thanks. I have a laptop, and while I have two portable drives I
don't have any other laptop drives. I don't know if I could boot
from one of the portable ones, but I'll check the BIOS settings next
time I boot.

Laptop hard drives aren't that expensive -- maybe for the peace of
mind I should buy one simply for the purpose of testing the backup.
(I've done limited testing already by using Explorer to access
occasional files from the backups.)

 

[Dick Mahar]

You must have been the owner of one of those HP/AMD boxes with the Intel
drivers. It was "broke" before you installed SP2.

Thanks to all who responded. I think that I will wait for SP2., or until a
problem occurs, and then get into the heavy stuff. I appreciate the
opinions, and agree.

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

I have WIN 7 64 bit, premium. Now every day I am offered an opportunity to
download SPI. After an unpleasant experience with SP2 in WIN XP, I am
apprehensive. All my other upates are installed, and my OS is apparently
working just about perfectly. Is there any real reason to install SP? I
have always been a believer in "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Also, will it be possible to remove SP1 easily if I for some reason want
to?.............TIA

From what I've read, SP1 doesn't add much to non-Server computers. It's
mostly just all of the security and other patches, plus a few minor
updates.

 

[John Aldred]

Char Jackson wrote:

[Snip]

Maybe I'm weird, but I have a bunch of spare hard drives laying
around, mostly smaller ones that have been replaced by larger ones.
Anyway, if I'm using an imaging program for the first time I'll grab
an old drive, slap it in, restore to it, and see what happens.

[Snip]

That makes two of us that are a bit weird then
I was doing exactly the same thing two weeks ago, when I was preparing to
use the 2011 version of Acronis True Image for the first time. The other
thing that I wanted to find out was if it could restore images created by
the 2010 version. It seems that it can.

 

[Char Jackson]

I agree. Again, can you explain how one can "see if it works",
without doing a restore and thus overwriting a known good system with
a probably good system?

Just so this question isn't left hanging without an answer, I'll
repeat here that I restore to a different drive that I've temporarily
connected. If the restore works, fine, but if not, then I just
reconnect the original drive.

Note that I don't test every image this way. I do this test when I
begin using a new version of my backup software, Acronis True Image in
my case, and then periodically after that. I've seen too many cases
(in my little computer shop) where someone proudly proclaimed that
they have an image backup, and we come to find out it doesn't work to
restore the system to a bootable state.

 

[Char Jackson]

Thanks. I have a laptop, and while I have two portable drives I
don't have any other laptop drives. I don't know if I could boot
from one of the portable ones, but I'll check the BIOS settings next
time I boot.

Laptop hard drives aren't that expensive -- maybe for the peace of
mind I should buy one simply for the purpose of testing the backup.
(I've done limited testing already by using Explorer to access
occasional files from the backups.)

I haven't had an extra laptop drive on hand for awhile now, too, so
I'm in the same boat. In the meantime, I use an adapter that lets me
connect a standard 3.5" drive. It's ugly, but it works, and I just use
it in the shop.

 

[Steve]

Tried to install SP1 on my Windows 7 Ultimate machine and it failed with
code 80004005. When I click get help with this download the help I get
does not help at all.

 

[Joe Morris]

Tried to install SP1 on my Windows 7 Ultimate machine and it failed with
code 80004005. When I click get help with this download the help I get
does not help at all.

I've not had problems with SP1 in my tests (so far) but one of my users did.
A bit of research came up with a fix (at least for my user) although I don't
have a good explanation for why it's involved: it increases the upper filter
limit via a Registry change.

Key: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network
Value: MaxNumFilters
Change: from 8 to 14 (0x08 to 0x0E)

Not sure if a reboot is required. The user reported success after making
that one change, but since I've not experienced the problem (and the user
works several hundred miles from my office, making a personal visit
difficult) I've not been able to investigate this any further.


SECURITY REMINDER: Be very careful about accepting recommendations for
changes to your system from people who you do not have affirmative reason to
trust. You probably know little or nothing about me, so you should not
blindly follow recommendations (such as the above) until and unless you have
investigated them and/or validated them through individuals who you trust.

Joe Morris

 

[XS11E]

I've not had problems with SP1 in my tests (so far) but one of my
users did. A bit of research came up with a fix (at least for my
user) although I don't have a good explanation for why it's
involved: it increases the upper filter limit via a Registry
change.

Key: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network
Value: MaxNumFilters
Change: from 8 to 14 (0x08 to 0x0E)

Not sure if a reboot is required. The user reported success after
making that one change, but since I've not experienced the problem
(and the user works several hundred miles from my office, making a
personal visit difficult) I've not been able to investigate this
any further.

That's one of the dozens of fixes I tried, the OP might do as I did,
forget the service pack until such time as it's redone.

If you'll check various forums, this failure it VERY common and the
Error Code 80004005 means:

"It didn't work and we have no idea why or how to fix it? Love, MSFT"

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

My Win 7 had 90 MB of "minor updates", which, of course, you didn't list.

That's still pretty miniscule if you consider that the full update is
nearly 1G or so.