My OS is Vista Home premium and it has been trouble free since the initial install. I don't install all the updates but select the ones I require (I refer to the MS page first)

My internet connection is "dial-up" and accordingly a friend downloaded SP1 for me, copied it to a disk and it's size is shown as 444,934kb.

I installed it and was surprised to find that on my machine it took nearly an hour to install. As is my habit I backed up my system first (Acronis). At first glance all seemed well excepting that after every programme selection I got a pop-up advising me that the system had recovered from an unexpected shutdown. I had not experienced any shutdowns so the message was a mystery to me.

Later I went through the motions of logging onto the Net and as soon as I clicked the "Connect" button the system shut down and rebooted. I tried three or four times and it did the same thing everytime. I determined to uninstall the upgrade but it became obvious that it was going to take as long to uninstall as it had taken to install so I bunged in the Acronis disk and pressed Reset. I now have my trouble free "SP1-less" system again.

Is my problem unique or has anyone else had difficulties like this?

Once I thought I was wrong, now I'm not so sure!

Did you have a firewall, antivirus, or spyware program active while installing sp1?

These programs while running can cause conflict with the sp1 installation.

Yes... I had AVG and Vista's resident firewall running.

Once I thought I was wrong, now I'm not so sure!

Ewen,

I do not understand your logic behind *selective updates*.

All Vista updates allow you to have safe usage of its functioning core, including the built-in firewall.

Yes, Vista SP1 is altogether a new OS in itself, as several hundreds of small updates been put together in 400+MB installer.

As usual, Vista backs up installed portion, and then replaces it with newer version.

It took me ~45 min to installed 190MB update and that much time to download. By default, most MS automated updates start at 2am, but you could start earlier (say 11pm)

The part I don't understand is why are you running TWO firewalls!

When you started the installation process you were prompted to close all running applications. Did you?

And by the way yes it takes about an hour to fully install Vista SP1 from the 445MB (not kb) file.

i_Xp/VistaUser

One of the requirements to successfully install SP1 is to have installed all previous updates first - irrelevant of whether you think they are necessary. SP1 will not auto-update until you've installed all previous updates so, by installing from the full package, & bypassing the pre-requisites, I'm not at all surprised that SP1 hasn't installed properly.

I'm guessing you haven't got 2 firewalls? - as AVG is your antivirus & you are only using the Vista firewall that shouldn't cause any problems.

"I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us..."

Johnr... you are correct, I have the Vista firewall and AVG antivirus running (I have no idea why respondents would think I have two firewalls running.)

I have read in so many posts in this forum of people who have reported difficulties with their system after installing updates that I determined to check each one out at the MS site before I installed it and as I said before my system has never failed me yet (apart from an incorrectly applied Nvidia driver.)

I had no additional programmes running when I started the install and it never occurred to me to turn off the firewall and AVG (I thought programmes as in "applications" like Word, Excel etc..)

From the tone of the replies here it would appear that I need to install all the updates first before I can even think about SP1 and if that is the case I may as well forget it because there must be hundreds that I have missed and quite candidly I would not have the foggiest idea where to start.

PS: I have just referred to this link which is perhaps where I should have started:

http://www.computing.net/windowsvis...

I would still appreciate some advice on how to go about discovering how many updates I've missed.

Once I thought I was wrong, now I'm not so sure!

Install this :
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/wul_se...

It will aloow you to enumerate all Windows Updates. Then you can figure which ones you need to install.

Thank you Effient... I'll follow that up and get back.

Once I thought I was wrong, now I'm not so sure!

Ewen,

My badness johnr is right about AVG not being a FW. Sorry about that.

effient & Ewen,

As an FYI note the following quoted from Nirsoft page regarding WinUpdatesList:

Be aware that for now, WinUpdatesList doesn't work under Windows Vista.

i_Xp/VistaUser

XPUser... I just found that out last night. I checked on my updates in "Add Remove Programmes" I am just wondering what other critical updates SP1 still needs to install properly.

Once I thought I was wrong, now I'm not so sure!