How shall I reboot you? Let me count the ways

Yesterday I had to reinstall Windows XP Home from scratch on a friends laptop. The laptop had caught a virus or something and after cleaning it off it seems that Internet Explorer was broken. Windows update just wouldn't work generating a blank page claiming the browser didn't support frame, and most things that used an IE control were totally broken. The IE about page didn't give a version number, all attempts to uninstall it failed, and if I tried to install a later version it claimed the latest version was already in place. Everything else worked great - if my friend was a Firefox user I would have been tempted to just let them have it back. But they weren't and the number of Windows features that are broken by lack of IE controls is too intrusive to make the machine usable for a novice - even system restore didn't come up. Since no amount of recovery console, system file checking and other things would fix it I was left with no choice but to reinstall Windows from scratch.

Unfortunately my friend didn't have the original disks but it was a fully licensed laptop so I located an XP Home installation disk (note, an upgrade wont work for reinstallation, it complains that the current version is newer and bombs out). Being an original XP Home disk and not SP1 or SP2 or the manufacturers disk I knew I was in for a long process of update, update, update to the machine back on its feet, so guess how many times I had to reboot the machine?

Well for the initial XP Home installation there were three complete reboots. I had to call Microsoft during the process too because the disk I was using was an OEM Dell disk and the machine was an HP. Fortunately they took the product key from the back of the machine and gave me my authorization code with no questions asked (apart from the usual "you're running this on only one machine in your home right?". Apart from the screen pretty much everything important was working fine on the machine without a single manufacturer driver or utility. The LCD screen was in 800x600 mode but it was still perfectly usable. I decided to wait until I'd finished upgrading and then apply the latest manufacturer code from their website.

So then I started running Windows update with the "express install" option. There was one small update, then a big one with a whole mess of security patches (19), and then I was ready for the XP SP2 update. Actually it was only about 60Mb and didn't take that long but as soon as I'd done it I then had to get back to security updates again. There was another small one with some hardware updates. Then there was another huge update containing 26 different security patches. After that I'd run out of express install updates which is basically all those marked as "High priority".

When I switched to the custom update option and found four hardware patches available and six software ones. I was able to do all the hardware patches in one go, and then all the software ones (which I found surprising since they included WMP 10). But the software installed included the .NET framework which forced another two complete update cycles for software patches and then updates.

Finally I was up to the point where I had only device specific stuff to install from the manufacturer. That would get the one-touch keys, WiFi support and other stuff running and took another three (it might have been more, I lost count). After that I put on Microsoft AntiSpyware and Grisoft AVG Free also requiring reboots.

The final damage?

Install XP Home - 3 reboots
Express Updates to XP2 - 3 reboots
Express Updates after XP2 - 3 reboots
Custom non-critical updates - 4 reboots
Manufacturer updates - 3 reboots
Antivirus and antispyware installation - 2 reboots

Grand total for bare machine to completely up to date XP Home install ready for consumer use: 18 reboots

Okay so the good part is everything went without a hitch. All updates just ran smoothly without hanging, all software was readily available for download and the machine is tip top again. That kind of thing would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. It might even be safe to use for another few months until so more critical security updates come along!

My biggest beef with this whole process? That Microsoft doesn't just have, ready for download, a complete and fully patched Windows XP SP2 image. If their activation code works so great why not? What is the harm in allowing people to download it? Ditto for system manufacturers - why can't they keep a fully patched OS install download available with all the device specific stuff already thrown in? This would have saved me literally hours of time and that was all for just one installation. Cumulatively across the entire Windows XP user community that's probably millions of hours of saved time every year, just think what the benefit to mankind it would be!