• July 13, 2000 •
Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 Review
This month, Microsoft will release its first extensive collection of bug fixes for Windows 2000, in the form of a Service Pack 1 (SP1). This fact will probably mean that there will be a new round of corporate adoptions of Windows 2000, as manycorporations will typically wait for the first service pack to arrive before upgrading their software.
Service Pack 1 focuses on several areas:
- Reliability SP1 includes fixes for data loss and corruption problems, access violations, and memory loss issues
- Setup SP1 includes fixes for problems that cause Win2K Setup to fail or not restart
- OS functionality Updates to existing features and functions that have been requested by customers. Although Microsoft promised "no new features" in service packs, some additions could certainly be classified as such. For example, all of the Internet Explorer components (except for IE itself, oddly) are updated to IE 5.5 levels. This includes Outlook Express and the Internet Connection Wizard
- Application and hardware compatibility Updates and new drivers for products that have been requested by customers
- Security SP1 includes the updates for known security issues
- Year 2000 (Y2K) SP1 includes the latest Y2K updates
SP1 will be made available from the Microsoft Web site, and will be around 63MB in size. A CD-ROM version will also be available, and this CD-ROM will include additional tools, documentation and add-ons.
SP1 can be installed from the CD-ROM, the Internet or a network share, and supports Windows File Protection (WFP), a feature that prevents key file systems from being overwritten by other applications. When SP1 is installed, the WFP catalog file (sp.cat) is updated with the information for the files that were changed in SP1. This updated catalog file also contains pointers to the SP1-level system files so that subsequent application installs will trigger the correct file replacements if necessary.
Microsoft is also introducing a Web-based service pack installation, similar to the Web-based install routines for Internet Explorer, Office 2000, and Windows Update. The Web install will detect which files you need to have updated and only download those that are needed. For most Windows 2000 users, this is going to result in a download in excess of 60MB, so you'll better have an ISDN/xDSL or Cable Modem connection! The Web install option requires you to use Internet Explorer (due to the use of ActiveX).
Another feature in SP1 is the ability to slipstream it into an existing Windows 2000 installation share. So you can integrate the SP1 files into a Windows 2000 installation share; subsequent installations of the OS will automatically include the SP1 code, without the need for a separate installation of SP1.
You can also apply hot fixes to a Windows 2000 install share if desired. Hot fixes are packaged as auto-extracting files, and are installed by running the hotfix.exe. Hotfix.exe is smart enough to know not to install if the files on the system are newer than those in the hot fix.
Another distribution possibility is the use of the System Management Server (SMS). SMS can advertise the availability of SP1 to SMS clients on a network and install SP1 on SMS clients using a standard SMS package. Clients that recognize the SP1 package can install the product automatically.
Uninstalling SP1
To uninstall SP1, simply navigate to Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel and choose Windows 2000 SP1. You can also uninstall the service pack from a command line: From the command prompt window, navigate to C:\winnt\\$ntservicepackuninstall$\spuninst\ (or similar) and type spuninst.exe. When installing SP1, it creates a folder named $ntservicepackuninstall$ in the Windows folder that contains compressed backup versions of the original files, unless you specify a command line option to exclude backing up the original files. So restoring to a pre-SP1 system should be pretty straightforward.
