Just Another Dave » Windows

Was building a few machines yesterday

dave — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:52:02 +0000

And it looks like I got the new release of xp, which is XP SP2C. I should have realised something was awry when I notice that it was a new sticker style for the license key, but I didn’t clue in.

So when I tried to install the OS with one of the older discs I have around the office it took the key no problem. However on the first boot, XP required immediate activation. Further to that, when stepping through the activation wizard, no Installation ID was generated.

This is because I used a SP2C cd key with a original SP2 disc. Installing with a SP2C disc solves this problem. A quick search on google and the MS KB didn’t really give me any hints, so I figured I’d post about it here.

Offline Update of Windows Boxen

dave — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:19:22 +0000

While catching up on the month of podcasts I somehow spaced on, came a cross an episode of Security Now that mentioned ctupdate from Heise Security. Essentially, you pick what products you want to create an update disc for, then the language, then the format (cd or dvd) and hit go. It downloads all the updates from microsoft.com and packages them on the cd. From there it uses MS’ Baseline Security dealy to update the machine. Add in the nice feature of it being able to automatically reboot and log in (with an account it creates for this purpose, and delete when it’s done) and it’s quite the tidy little package.

Download it available here.

Decent guide here.