97 updates?? You gotta be kidding.

[Shalom]

We keep one computer running XP up at the front counter for the cashier to look up prescriptions, etc. This machine is basically used as a terminal for remote access to the server, which is under the back counter basically in front of my knees, and nothing else that I know of.

Last night, as I was shutting down the store for the night, I go to log this remote session out. As I do so, I notice the little yellow "!" icon that says windoze wants to update itself. Now the remote sessions run fullscreen, so the only time you ever see the underlying screen is when you log the session out, so I can see why nobody noticed this.

I click on it. It says it wants to install SP3.

!!?

How long has this thing remained unpatched? XPSP3 came out in 2008 for crying out loud.

Anyhoo, I tell it to do its thing and go home for the night. I know from experience that installing SP3 takes a while.

Come back this morning to a Reboot Required screen. Do this, go through the IE8 setup (which is a hard stop, nothing will proceed until you either give it what it wants or push the bugger-off button, and not one of the choices presented is at all critical. One of the peeves I have with MS, but whatever.) Now it wants to download the "improved update software" (read: the validation tool that tells MS if you're running a pirate version), and it installs that, finished. So next I re-run the updater, see what else it needs. It sits there a worrying long time. Finally:

"Downloading update 1 of 97 . . . "

You gotta be kidding me.

[barainga]

Sounds like the computers we use at pizza place.

And they wonder why they crash all the time.

[Pedersen]

I think my current record is 150 updates. Of course, that was from an XP SP2 installation, fresh, and installing absolutely every possible update. There's a reason I hate setting up a new machine on XP.

[Raveni]

How did you look up prescriptions for the next 6 hours?

[TheSHAD0W]

How did you look up prescriptions for the next 6 hours?

Update runs in the background.

Yeah, that's about how many updates it's been since SP3 came out. Not surprised.

[Shalom]

How did you look up prescriptions for the next 6 hours?

Used a different computer.

We don't use that one much anyway; my workstation is at the server, and the tech/manager has another computer at his end of the counter. The front one is mostly used if there's a patient standing at the counter, which isn't all that common: most scripts here are delivered.

But it just goes to show how long it's been since anyone actually paid attention the thing. I've got another, similar (and longer) rant coming up regarding the server itself, but that's for another thread.

[PepperElf]

to be honest there are some xp machines that CAN'T be updated.

Had a customer with an HP mini running XP. had to tell them we couldn't update it for them cos the solid state hard drive was 16G and the update was 15G.

sadly... i have that hp mini too. ain't used it in over a year tho. i rather regret buying it.

[Kogarashi]

PepperElf, after dealing with my college roommate's HP Pavilion (about half the size of my own home-built computer), I refuse to work in anything less than a regular-sized case. We couldn't do diddly with the hardware in her computer, even though both of us knew how to do hardware upgrades and the like. There just wasn't the room to put anything, plus the motherboard had been hardwired to only accept the harddrive that came with the thing, so we couldn't even change up that. The only saving grace was that she'd gotten it for free because the house it had been in had been hit by lightning and apparently fried the computer (turned out it had only taken out the modem, which had subsequently shut down the rest of the computer until removed).

And oh dear, I remember the day I had to completely reinstall XP on my last build sometime after SP3 had come out. An entire day spent just on running all the updates and everything so XP could see the entire drive and not just the small portion that pre-SP1 is capable of seeing, and after that I still had to reinstall all my programs.

[Shalom]

Well, I think I figured out why this happened.

My server is the only one of the three pharmacy computers that has always-on internet access. [1] THe other two, if you want to get on the net for some reason, you run up against the firewall (a so-called "network security appliance"), which you then have to log into in order to go online. Now all the pharmacy employees know the login and password for this, but if you don't do this logon, the machine can't connect to anything outside the LAN. This means that windowsupdate.micro$oft.com is blocked most of the time, so even though automatic updating is turned on, nothing will actually happen unless you first logon and then update.

This being the case, I decided to check my boss's workstation at the other end of the counter. Hit IE, logged into the firewall, and went to microsoft update. Sure enough . . .

"Downloading update 1 of 98 . . ."

At least I'd already installed SP3 on that one, sometime last year.

[1] Although since the Asifa, they've turned filtering on, so there's no longer unlimited access. E-commerce, reference, etc. sites are mostly allowed, but social, arts/entertainment, multimedia etc. sites are now blocked. On the one hand, I think this is a good idea, both in terms of getting work done, and protecting innocent eyes from seeing things they really shouldn't see (remember this is an exclusively Hasidic neighborhood, literally a ghetto in the original non-pejorative sense of the word, where modest (i.e. nonrevealing) dress is the norm. No man who lives there has ever seen so much as a woman's elbow, unless it's their wife's or under-3-year-old daughter's. Anyone wants to argue about this, take it to Fratching, I don't wanna hear it.) On the other hand, I've been on the 'net since before there was pr0n on it 1993, and I'd gotten used to being able to hit youtube, drudgereport, various webcomix, certain blogs, etc when I wanted a break. Sure I can get around this by tethering my laptop to my cellphone and logging on through vzn, but it's really too slow for video. Ah well, CS.com is as yet not blocked, so the essentials are still available. )

[Zoom]

I never bothered getting SP3. SP2 worked fine.

Of course, I only use my XP comps for offline coding projects now. But hey, they still work!

[dalesys]

Well, as CCR sang in '68: Ninety-Nine And A Half (Won't Do)

[telecom_goddess]

I think my current record is 150 updates. Of course, that was from an XP SP2 installation, fresh, and installing absolutely every possible update. There's a reason I hate setting up a new machine on XP.

Ditto. I have a desktop at home that runs xp and if it ever crashes I do NOT want to re install. It'd take a week.

[Krysalis]

Sounds like my dad's computer, which I was running maintenance on last night, also making sure he had Windows 7 updated with the latest patches, especially against the recent Flame malware.

He has never, ever, once run the updater, in the year he's had the laptop.

So, we finally get him updated to SP1 last night, then called it a night.

Next will be renewing his antivirus subscription...

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Ditto. I have a desktop at home that runs xp and if it ever crashes I do NOT want to re install. It'd take a week.

Sounds like my old laptop, which I've been working on for the past week. Trying to re-install 108 plus updates on Vista Basic is a royal PITA. I have to break them up into several batches of 10 or less (depending on the file size) just to get them all downloaded in order.

Of course once I get past that part, updating the software (Adobe products, antivirus, et al) is a cakewalk compared to the sheer tedious Hell that is Windows Update.

[roxtar]

had the system drive on my htpc crash a couple of weeks ago. took forever to go from xp -> sp2 -> sp3 ->fully patched sp3.

I had backups of most of my "stuff" but not the full disk image, so I had to build back the OS from a bare install (didn't have the external drive space for everything).

I think my update record was when I went from ubuntu 8.10 (intrepid ibex) to ubuntu 10.04 (lucid lynx). since intrepid wasn't an LTS distro, I had to go through jaunty and karmic before I could install lucid.