speeding up installing Service Pack 2

[asteroid]

when installing sp2 for XP (or indeed sp4 for 2000 maybe?)

is there means of disabling the lengthy process of backing up system files that it does before hand?

the average install of SP2 is about 35-40 minutes, and most of the time Im installing ontop of a new install of XP, so theres no need to waste time and hard disk space backing up stuff.

Id imagine there is a DOS command switch or a script that could be run to speed this up I guess, not found anything obvious on the net though

[Coops]

No you cannot alter the way SP2 installs. The uninstall option is on in case something goes wrong and SP2 needs to be removed. Microsoft gave you the option of not backing up with SP1 and loads of people complained as they decided not to backup before patching then found something no longer worked and they could not uninstall the service pack as they did not back up. So this time Microsoft decided to force the backup rather than listen to people moaning about something that was not actually microsofts fault. Customer chose not to backup the files.

However if these are fresh installs why not install using Windows Media with SP2 already built in or make your own by slipstreaming SP2 in to some media you already have. This way when you install a PC SP2 will already be installed straight away.

[Millay]

This is not strictly true, you can instrall SP2 without creating the backup files.

To do this you need to download the complete version of SP2 this is usually labelled sp2 for multuiple computers or some such.

then drop to the command line, find where you saved the downloaded sp2 to and type the following:

C:\>WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe /n

theres lots of options (switches for sp2) to see them all type the following:

C:\>WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe /help

Hope this helps

[Coops]

This is very true, but the majority of customers should stay away from adding command line switches unless they really know what they are doing as it could have adverse affects and obviously limit the ablility to correct any problems that arise.

In fact the backup for SP2 does not take that much time unless your running it on an older slow spec PC. The time is taken up by the install because of what it has to do in order to patch certain windows system files while the system is running. Once again something else effected by the spec of the PC

I would just make slip streamed media, Faster in the long run