ejsmith
Sat, 27th Mar '04, 4:41am
For awhile now, I've been downloading the Qfixes from msft, and burning them off to dvdrw. The idea is that I secure my machine before I connect to the net.
Service Pack 1 weighs in at 120meg, or so. The immediately available "critical" updates run about 25meg. The second round of criticals (after you install the first load, reboot, and go back to update) pulls another 20 meg or so. Overall, I had about 70meg of critical and highly recommended updates, along with the 100meg SP1. I had a batch file that would go through there and do a silent install of most of them. And then there's the 35meg of Directx9b and 10meg of wmp9.
You can always slipstream, but I've just not bothered with it. I don't know why I haven't; I guess I'm not installing as often as I did Windows2k.
My point:
I downloaded Autopatcher 4.5 (http://www.autopatcher.com/DownloadXP.htm) (the Feburary edition), and used it instead of all my Qfixes. It was a 245meg download, but includes everything I've already mentioned (except for SP1), plus a bunch of tweaks and nifty powertools. I think it was trying to install 175 different "packages" for me, with the default probably being about 150. Overall, I'm very pleased with it. I've only been running for a couple of hours right now, but I can tell a significant improvement in tToEE.
I can definately recommend it to everyone running XP. Burn it and SP1 off to a cd, and it will save you some serious hassle the next time your machine becomes too unwieldy to handle. It might even save you from a Mydoom on your way to the windowsupdate site with an unprotected machine. :)
Service Pack 1 weighs in at 120meg, or so. The immediately available "critical" updates run about 25meg. The second round of criticals (after you install the first load, reboot, and go back to update) pulls another 20 meg or so. Overall, I had about 70meg of critical and highly recommended updates, along with the 100meg SP1. I had a batch file that would go through there and do a silent install of most of them. And then there's the 35meg of Directx9b and 10meg of wmp9.
You can always slipstream, but I've just not bothered with it. I don't know why I haven't; I guess I'm not installing as often as I did Windows2k.
My point:
I downloaded Autopatcher 4.5 (http://www.autopatcher.com/DownloadXP.htm) (the Feburary edition), and used it instead of all my Qfixes. It was a 245meg download, but includes everything I've already mentioned (except for SP1), plus a bunch of tweaks and nifty powertools. I think it was trying to install 175 different "packages" for me, with the default probably being about 150. Overall, I'm very pleased with it. I've only been running for a couple of hours right now, but I can tell a significant improvement in tToEE.
I can definately recommend it to everyone running XP. Burn it and SP1 off to a cd, and it will save you some serious hassle the next time your machine becomes too unwieldy to handle. It might even save you from a Mydoom on your way to the windowsupdate site with an unprotected machine. :)