Datasheet

INSTALLING SP1
5
TIP
WSUS is a big topic and not one we’re covering in this book, but you can find more information
and download links at www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/updateservices/
default.mspx . If you don’t currently have a tool to make patching easier, consider WSUS. It’s free
and pretty good.
If you’ve set your system up to automatically draw patches from Microsoft Update, or if you’ve
got it configured to get patches from your WSUS server, then you’ve probably got SP1 already. But
if not, then you may want to either order a CD with SP1 on it from Microsoft, or just download it.
Why not just download it? Well, SP1 is over 300MB in size, and if your Internet connection is at a
low speed, then you might not get the download done before, say, the release of 2003 SP2. If you
do want to order SP1 on a CD, Microsoft charges $5.25 per CD, and you can find the links to order
it at www.microsoft.com/technet/downloads/winsrvr/servicepacks/sp1/default.mspx .
To download SP1 instead of getting it shipped to you, just go to the above URL and click the
Downloading it from Download Center hyperlink, or go to www.microsoft.com/downloads
and search on “Microsoft windows server 2003 service pack 1”—2003 SP1 will be one of the hits
the search engine will return. (Note that if you’re using Small Business Server 2003, SBS 2003 has
its own separate set of SP1 files; look down the list of files offered by Microsoft’s web server and
you’ll see them.) Start it downloading, and it’ll be done in no time, geologically speaking. The
file you’ll get will have a name representing the language that the service pack is built to sup-
port. As I’m doing this for the U.S. English version of SP1, the file I ended up downloading was
named WindowsServer2003-KB889101-SP1-x86-ENU.exe , where the ENU means “United
States English”; you’ll see a different code if you’re downloading a version localized to another
place.
Before we go any further, do yourself a favor: rename the file to something short like sp1.exe .
For brevity’s sake, that’s how I’ll refer to it for the rest of this chapter. Next, let’s install it.
Installing SP1
Assuming that you’re not letting Microsoft Update or WSUS install SP1 for you, you’ve got a few
options at this point to get SP1 on one or more of your systems:
◆ Just put SP1 on a CD, walk around to your 2003 servers and run sp1.exe on each server from
the GUI.
◆
Put sp1.exe somewhere on the network where all of your 2003 servers can access it, and use
the command-line options to kick off the SP1 install.
◆
If you have an Active Directory, then extract sp1.exe to its component files and deliver it as
a group policy.
SP1 from the GUI
Assuming that you want to install SP1 by just double-clicking the WindowsServer2003-KB889101-
SP1-x86-ENU.exe file (which, recall, I suggested that you rename sp1.exe ), then you’ll first see a
dialog box labeled Extracting Files like Figure 1.1.
Sp1.exe creates a temporary file with a random name like b0bda746128 or the like and unpacks
SP1’s heft to about 413MB of files. After a bit, you’ll see a typical wizard greeting page like Figure 1.2.
Click Next and you get to agree to the SP1 software license as in Figure 1.3.
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