Datasheet

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CHAPTER 1 GETTING AND INSTALLING SP1
SP1 from the Command Line
As I’ve already said, many folks will choose to start up sp1.exe and run the SP1 installation from
the GUI because it’s simple. But if you have some special needs, then consider running SP1 from the
command line with one or more of its options. Those options fall into a few rough categories:
◆
/quiet , /passive , and /o reduce the amount of information that the SP1 installer shows
and causes it to ask you fewer questions.
◆
/norestart , /forcerestart , and /f let you control whether or not your system immedi-
ately reboots after SP1’s installed, and how.
◆ /n and /d: let you control the amount of space that the SP1 installation process takes up on
your disk by letting you skip the backup part of the SP1 install ( /n ), or telling sp1.exe to
store the backup on another drive ( /d: ).
◆
/x lets you pre-extract the files from sp1.exe to a folder.
◆
/uninstall uninstalls SP1.
◆
/integrate preinstalls SP1 onto an I386 directory so that you can do fresh installs of 2003
with SP1 already included.
◆
/l tells sp1.exe to list the hotfixes that you’ve got on this system.
And note that sp1.exe , the SP1 installer, doesn’t care about uppercase or lowercase;
/forcerestart and /FORCERESTART get the same results.
Make the SP1 Installer Quieter
Let’s consider these options in the order that I’ve already listed them. First, /quiet tells sp1.exe
not to show you any input, including error messages. That’s good if you want to kick off sp1.exe
and have it just do its job without splashing things on the screen and if you’re sure that you’ve got
SP1’s syntax down correctly. It’s bad , in contrast, if you’re not so sure about the sp1.exe syntax, as
it can be pretty puzzling to try to start up SP1 with some options, leave the service pack to install
itself, and then return a bit later only to find that nothing’s installed, and SP1’s not produced an
error message that offers any clues to why it didn’t work.
If you’d like SP1 to install without asking you any questions, as /quiet does, but to have it still
provide you some feedback, as /quiet doesn’t , then use /passive . /passive installs SP1 in a
hands-off manner but shows SP1’s installation progress bar. For example, to tell sp1.exe to just
install with all of the default settings—back up the RTM files, install SP1, and do not reboot until
told to do so—but to still show progress on the screen, you could open up a command prompt
and type
sp1 /passive
WARNING This will only work if you’ve put sp1.exe somewhere on your system path, or if you
have changed your current directory to wherever sp1.exe is using the CD command. That advice
applies to any of the examples in the rest of this chapter. (And, of course, as with any command-
line command, you’ve got to press the Enter key to activate the command.)
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