SP1.1 & Windows Hotfix

If you have already installed two SPs to SolidWorks and have successfully
downloaded the Windows Hotfix and installed SP1.1, please be kind and share
how you reached your success.

IMHO, this is a complete unnecessary pain in the ass.

Step 1. Call the MS number SW provides. Fish my way thru MS support and was
given a different number to call for
Hotfixes, which of course, was not the number SolidWorks listed. After a
long time holding and repeating my name, email address, phone number, hotfix
I was calling about several times (despite them telling me all that info was
"in the system".) I finally get the Hotfix zip.exe file.

Step 2. Open Hot fix zip.exe file. It gives me two .exe files. One of which
is a little program that runs and apparently patches
things. The other file self-expands and puts a msi.pdb file in a strange
folder. No instructions. I search for .pdb files on my computer with no such
luck of replacing one. I reboot.

Step 3. Begin installing my SW 1.0-1.1 patch. I get some strange (1603-0)
error from the SW installer and guess what: msiexec.exe crashes. Imagine
that.

Apparently I did something wrong and the installer isn't patch correctly. I
guess this means installing from scratch, downloading 0.0-1.1 and praying
that SolidQuirks has the Spanish help file corrected by now.

BTW- What's the reasoning behind the 1.1 release so soon after 1.0?

 

Was 1.0 actually released? I thought it was put out as a release
candidate for broader testing and then quickly pulled back.

 

It was on EV for a long time, but was officially released recently. I have
the 1.0 official release running now, but trying to install 1.1 is a PITA.

 

I also had an equally frustrating time.... And I also do not know what
that file is. If it is useful it is certainly not installed unless the
other exe installs it automatically. I have not had any apparent
serious issues, but would live to know if that is important. Why they
cannot include a two line read my to explain is beyond me.

Daniel

 

Note The Windowsxp-kb893048-x86-enu.exe file is the hotfix installer. The
Windowsxp-kb893048-x86-symbols-enu.exe file is the installer for the hotfix
symbol file that is named Msi.pdb. You do not have to install the
Windowsxp-kb893048-x86-symbols-enu.exe file

Apparently you don't need this file.

I ran the hotfix again and rebooted. I got to insert the 2nd CD during the
update and got another error. Strange thing is that SW icons and the
Help>About state SP01.1. So I don't know if it's properly patched or not.

I would go back to 0.0 and start over, but I fear I may not be able to pach
0.0 now either.

 

I just got off the phone with a helpful M$ (Germany) support person,
and they also could not find a rhyme or reason for the symbols_ENU file.

were you updating from SP0.0, or EV1.0? I only needed the first SW
install disk, and it when fine... if a little slow.

Maybe I start over also... not really wanting to do that, but I rather
have clean slow and stable than fast and flakey.

Daniel

 

A tip that's saved my sorry ass in the past: Get Norton Ghost.

Before installing any major SP --whether Windows or an important
application-- clone or backup your system drive. Then you can experiment
away and laugh at just how well some of these SP's manage to mangle systems
rather than improve them.

If anything goes wrong you can restore your entire system back to where it
was prior to any patches being applied. It takes minutes rather than days.
If starting from scratch and using the conventional raw install approach, it
takes me about two weeks to reload and configure OS and applications on my
main development machine. I learned my lesson after having to endure a
couple of complete system rebuilds the hard way. Now all our development
machines get their system drives "ghosted" regularly to an external USB
backup drive. You can literally roll back any machine to any one of these
real "restore points" with relative ease, over lunch...and you can even go
out for lunch!!!

-Martin

 

Valid points.

First a philosophy: Disk space is cheap. Data loss or system failures
leading to rebuilds are expensive.

Today, about US$1 per GB. Just saw some 400GB drives for under $400. Being
that a nicely loaded system drive backup might be about 10GB (with mild
compression, less if using more compression), you can keep lots of backup on
an external (or internal) drive to be used only for that purpose.

It is, of course, important to know that your system is healthy. When I
build a new machine I do so without any connection to the network. Tried
and proven services packs (whether OS or application) are all burned to CDs
and have been fully virus-scanned prior to be placed in the engineering
library drive.

Before any application is installed I like to install the virus checking and
firewall software. I used to use Symantec but stopped because we had a case
of both anti-virus and firewall shutting down without announcement on a
notebook. That machine stayed on the network for about a week before we
noticed that it had been completely trashed by a virus. So, although I
highly recommend Symantec Ghost, after many, many years of using their AV
software I now stay away from it. Currently using McAfee.

Anyhow, depending on the machine, we might do a ghost backup immediately
after the OS and basic apps are up and running.

Then, of course, all the apps and patches are installed. Depending on what
you know about them you go as far and wide as you want and then do another
backup. That's your "base configuration".

Beyond that, it's up to you how you want to manage it. I never keep data on
the system drive. Every machine has two drives. Data files are kept on the
second drive. The system drive can shred itself to pieces for all I care,
no valuable data will be lost.

Since ghosting a drive is so simple, you could consider doing it on a weekly
basis. Like I said, over lunch or overnight. It truly is up to you just
how far you want to take it. Ghost will do incremental backups, but I just
don't like the idea.

Oh, yes, then there's the backup of a backup question. For that I refer you
to the start of this post: Disk space is cheap. Get another 400GB drive
for secondary backup. Disconnect and turn off when not backing-up or
restoring.

-Martin

 

Are there other "free" ghost programs? I have past experiences with
norton that make me hesitant to consider their products.

On the Mac there is a great product called Carbon Copy Cloner -
amazingly useful- especially because you can boot off the copy from an
external (or second internal) firewire drive. Very good solution if you
want to test on another drive first, or simply clone back to your
primary drive.

Is that more or less what norton ghost does?

Daniel

 

I guess I'm not alone on this one. I do have to say that the latest version
of Ghost (9.0) is pretty nice. I don't use their firewall or anti-virus any
more.

Part of the reason for my problems (AV and Firewall shut down without
warning) I think may be related to this ridiculous MS-style activation
business everyone is copying now. I do think it's backfiring on them
though. I'm pefectly happy and willing to buy and pay for good bug-free
software. Hell, we spend thousands of dollars on very expensive
full-of-bugs-pain-in-the-ass software.

I've seen at least two perfectly legitimate, paid for, WinXP PRO systems
that had been activated/authorized/registered for almost a year all of a
sudden pop-up a window saying that you only have three days until the system
is disabled due to a need to activate! The good news is that clicking on
the "Activate Now" button got the machine re-activated. Can you imagine
that happening on a mission-critical machine? I think this is what happened
with Norton's AV/Firewall, except that they just shut down and, as a result,
a machine got trashed by virus attacks.

So, this whole idea of linking my very ability to use the software to some
tenuous registration/activation mechanism that is unreliable at
best...anyhow, off-topic, don't get me started.

I think there's a way to boot off a ghost image. I don't know 'cause I've
only really used it for backup. I know that you can mount an image as a
drive and pull out individual files. That's very useful.

I don't know if there are freeware or shareware programs out there. Maybe
in the Linux world? You'd have to setup a dual-boot machine and drive-clone
from Linux. Probably not as much of a PITA as it may sound. Aside from
Linux, I'm not sure I'd want to trust my backups to freeware software. If
anything because long-term support may be just an interesting concept in
that world.

-Martin

 

Just so everyone knows, the .pdb file is a debugging symbol database
file that is used for, well, debugging. It's kind of odd that they
would supply this file. It may have some use to people developing with
the Windows Installer trying to test their installer in debug mode, but
other than that it's pretty useless.

Jonathan Anderson

 

Hello All
To save some people allot of time.
Here is what I got from Microsoft for XP Pro SP2. Copy and paste location
into your Browser and download. The password changes to the alternate on
2-16 and is good until 2-23. They advised to make a backup of everything(I
didn't). After unzipping you get (2) files. Dble click the x86.enu .exe
file, NOT the one with "symbols" in the name. After installing the hotfix,
install the SWX SPwhatever as you normally would. I have done 2 machines (1)
had 1.0ev (AMD64)and (1) had 0.1 (P-4 3.2gz)with no problems. I hope this is
clear enough. Good luck

Mike Eckstein
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The hot fix for your issue has been packaged and placed on an HTTP site for
you to download.

WARNING: This fix is not publicly available through the Microsoft website as
it has not gone through full Microsoft regression testing. If you would
like confirmation that this fix is designed to address your specific
problem, or if you would like to confirm whether there are any special
compatibility or installation issues associated with this fix, you are
encouraged to speak to a Support Professional in Product Support Services.

The package is password protected so be sure to enter the appropriate
password for each package. To ensure the right password is provided cut and
paste the password from this mail.

NOTE: Passwords expire every 7 days so download the package within that
period to insure you can extract the files. If you receive two passwords it
means you are receiving the fix during a password change cycle. Use the
second password if you download after the indicated password change date.

Package:
-----------------------------------------------------------
KB Article Number(s): 893048
Language: English
Platform: i386
Location
http://hotfixv4.microsoft.com/Windows XP/sp3/Fix150701/2600/free/218409_ENU_i386_zip.exe )
Password: QDBO!@p
Password Changes On: 02/16/2005
Next Password: dzYF+!Q

NOTE: Be sure to include all text between '(' and ')' when navigating to
this hot fix location!

Thanks!

 

I actually have a copy of SP1.0. I don't have the Spanish help though.

 

Blaaaah. Windows is just more complicated. I certainly do not trust
most software vendors with freeware on windows. Usually laden with
spyware or adware. On OSX it is different because you simply do not
have sneaky spyware installations you can get on windows. So I trust
more freeware on that platform.

Regarding Norton, my experience has been (again on the mac side) that
if someone had problems with their computer, it usually traced back to
an installation of norton antivirus or some other of their products.
Remove it and all would be well again. I also really really dislike the
auto authorization programs. Probably because windows is so intrusive
and treats the user as stupid (or is it that it makes the user stupid?
hmmmm).

Some examples:
-Unplug your network connection - get a message telling you your
network has been disconnected! Doh! I did it!
- McAfee antivirus auto update just does it without asking - like so
many windows programs... so I may be in the middle of something
important, and the machine slows down (or sometimes craps out) because
it is doing something behind my back without telling me, and then has
the nerve to put up a message telling me it was sneaking around and it
is done, and would I like to continue what I was doing!!! AND you have
to click the button, or the message window does not go away! OK; I did
check the auto-update feature, but it would be better to 1. ask before
doing the update to give me the option to delay it, 2. tell me it is
done and go away! why must I do something after it has done what it
wants!!!

OK... Wednesday morning OT rant...... so sorry.

Daniel

 

For this one, install a firewall (ZoneAlarm?) and do not allow automatic
connection to those.

My .01 Eu

JM

 

Thanks JM,

but in the first example, it is windows looking at it's own hardware
connections, so I think a firewall will not work. Also, for mcafee, it
needs to connect to get the updates ( if I want to have the latest
protection... which for PCs is a necessity. I just object the their
thinking about how to do it, and how and when to notify the user.
Anyway, I do have firewalls, both hardware and soft.

I guess my point is the general Windows logic:
1. don't tell me if I don't need to know about it
2. don't do something when I am working that may mess with what I am
doing (PCs get very slow multitasking - and prone to crash)
3. don't tell me about what you did after you did it if I cannot do
anything about it... and then wait until I confirm it is OK for me to
continue what I was doing before you interrupted me. Huh?

I can go on and on, but I shouldn't.

One last point: have a look at a windows KB article, like the one for
this hot fix issue. Now have a look at an apple KB article. Which tells
you what you REALLY need to know.

The hot fix example: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=893048
A semi-random apple example:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25479

My .01 CHF (0.00646610 EUR)

;-)

Daniel

 

What a MESS! Thank you Michael Eckstein, for your help. No wonder SW
just provided the phone number!


ca

 

OU812

 

WHAT is the second baseman.
WHO's on first.

 

Oh, then I must be on third.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"