7. Install critical updates.
I'm sure a lot of you know how to do this. Go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com, which will scan your system and download and automatically install the updates for you. Did you know you can have it simply download the updates, but save them so you can install them yourself as well? To accomplish this, click "Personalize Windows Update" on the left side. Next, check "show the link to Windows Update Catalog" and then click the "save settings" button. On the left hand side you should now have a "Windows Update Catalog" listed. Click it and pick "find updates for Microsoft Windows operating systems" and pick your operating system (including service pack). Click "advanced search options" and only check "critical updates and service packs" For Win2K SP4, you'll get 48+ possible updates. For Windows XP SP1, it's even more. Fortunately you rarely need anywhere near this many updates. Typically with SP4 installed for Win2k you will need around 12 of them. Windows XP SP1 is usually much worse, you will need 20+ updates.
You could download every update, which would take a long time, but there's a few things you can do to cut down on what you need. First of all, if you are reinstalling Windows on your system, you can "view installation history" and see which updates you've actually installed. There's a good chance that you will need these updates in the future, and since you've already installed them on your system you can "download" them almost instantly. Write down the numbers for the updates that you've installed, usually Q313890 for example. If you add all these from the critical updates catalog page, it will simply save them instead of downloading them. (Basically it looks like they downloaded instantly.) After you've selected which updates to download, go to the cart and pick where you want to save them. (Be aware that the filenames choosen for these updates are VERY long, some over 255 characters, and they will be saved under a number of folders.)
You could also "scan for updates" on a similar system and write down the numbers as well.
If you really aren't sure which updates you need, I've found these are the most common updates needed for Win2k SP4 systems. Windows XP SP1 has most these and a LOT more that it needs on top of these:
818529: June 2003, Cumulative Patch for Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 - (Posted Date: July 02, 2003) - about 2 megs
330994: April 2003, Security Update for Outlook Express 6 SP1 - (Posted Date: April 22, 2003) - 1.9 megs
You will definately need 818529 and 330994 if you installed IE6 SP1.
814078: Security Update (Microsoft Jscript version 5.6, Windows 2000, Windows XP) - (Posted Date: March 25, 2003)
816093: Security Update Microsoft Virtual Machine (Microsoft VM) - (Posted Date: June 03, 2003) - 5+ MBs
These 2 almost always come up as well, and 816093 is over 5 Megs, which is nice to have available.
817787: Security Update Windows Media Player 7.1 - (Posted Date: May 08, 2003)
If you install media player 7.1, there is another patch for 6.4 as well if you run that version instead.
823559: Security Update for Microsoft Windows - (Posted Date: July 08, 2003)
Security Update for Windows 2000 (823980) - (Posted Date: July 23, 2003) - about 1 mb (This is a major bug for Win2k/XP!)
Security Update, February 13, 2002 (MSXML 4.0) - (Posted Date: June 18, 2003) - 4.5 megs
Security Update for Microsoft Windows (819696) - (Posted Date: August 05, 2003) - if you didn't install Direct X 9.0b, but rather an older version, about 1 MB
Once you've got all these saved, burn them to your CD as well. If you use Nero, it may complain about the filename length and number of directories. I haven't had a system fail to read the CD properly however, so go ahead and burn the CD without renaming them.
When you get ready to install these updates, I'd recommend going to Windows Update and scanning to see which updates you need. Write down the numbers (and/or description). If you have the update on the CD, you can just install it from there by running the .exe. (You do NOT need to reboot after every update, just click no and reboot after you are all done.) If you don't have one of the needed updates, once you download and install it, you can have it saved by pretending to download the update from the catalog, that way you have it should you need to build/reinstall Windows on a similar system.
As a footnote, many of these updates are also available for download from Microsoft's Technet site. For example
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-026.asp is the patch for 823980. You can increment/decrement the MS03-026.asp to get to others. For example
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-030.asp is the Direct X patches.
That's pretty much it. If you download everything before you build the system you will save yourself hours (potentially a day for dial up users) of downloading time in the future. You can, and will, use this CD over and over if you build a lot of systems.
On my CD I also have:
Windows Media Player 7.1
Acrobat Reader 5
Winzip 8.1 and/or Winace 2.2
Nero Burning Rom updates
I hope some of you found this information useful!
