Discussion-Installing SP's after Factory Restore

I was recently helping a fella restore his Vista to Factory condition. We had BIG issues getting Vista to update and I see many others having trouble getting all the updates prior to SP2 to install. Here's just one example that I was reading about.

I had discussed this with a friend of mine who owns and operates a Tech Shop and he told me the issue is due to the fact that MS does not support Vista without SP2 and if you download and install the Standalone versions of SP1 and SP2 prior to accessing Windows Updates automatically Vista it will continue to auto update without an issues.

I tried this with the fella I was helping and it worked beautifully, as once SP1 & SP2 was installed all the other following updates installed with out issues.

Comments please?

Donna

I always do the sps first, including my Office '03, as well as I put in IE9.

Just mAinly to save time.

Hi Patonb,

Yes. It certainly does save a lot of time installing the SP's first, though I still don't understand why installing the standalone versions were readily acceptable as opposed to just downloading and installing via Automatic Updates which refused to install without errors.

I know what I'm thinking, but just can't find the right words. I need to think about this a bit more.

Thank you for your time,

Donna

The problem mostly comes about because of Vista's shortcomings in RTM out-of-the-box - and the fact that people insist on putting silly AV's like Norton on before updating.

Many AV's no longer support RTM Vista (or SP1 for that matter) - and will cause multiple errors, including WGA failures - and it's necessary to update first and then install the AV.
So far as I know, MSE is still compatible with RTM Vista - so can be used if necessary.