The long awaited , update to Vista was released on Tuesday. After my experienced with it, I have to say it is the most painful service pack ever from Microsoft. Remember the times when all you had to do is install the service pack, do one reboot and all is done ? well not anymore. Prepare to leave things overnight , expect it not to install, and take another hour reverting changes, and expect to have no indication of what went wrong. This was my experience while installing Vista SP1.

I downloaded the standalone install, let in install. It goes up to stage 3, and when it is 100% complete, the screen shows "Install was not successful, Reverting changes". This process goes on for about an hour and 2 reboots. The reversal is actually good, it brings back my  system to the pre- SP1 install state. After trying this since Tuesday and getting no where, I took the step of re-installing Vista.

I used the Upgrade option, as not to loose any of my settings or files. I then applied SP1 to this "fresh" installation and it worked !!.  SP1, includes all updates since the Vista release, and I think the setup process gets confused on a Vista system, that is fully patched.

Therefore, the "works-for-me-anecdotal" method to get SP1 to install, is to re-install Vista, and then apply SP1. Do not use windows update after the Vista re-install. Disable any anti-virus  and anti-spyware.

Haven't noticed any major performance improvements yet though. Though it seems a bit faster. Resume from hibernation is noticeably faster. I had issues where the system would hang when resuming. Will wait and see.

Fingers crossed....

First tried installing Office SP1 through Windows Update a few times but didn't work. The update fails for no apparent reason. The event log shows this;

Product: Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 -- Error 1935.

An error occurred during the installation of assembly component {04E73476-518E-4B6A-8E10-021A00078847}. HRESULT: 0x80131047. assembly interface: IAssemblyCacheItem, function: Commit, assembly name: Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint,fileVersion="12.0.6211.1000",

version="12.0.0.0000000",culture="neutral",publicKeyToken="71E9BCE111E9429C"

Googling for this error, gives me this KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926804, which recommends repairing the .Net framework  2.0 installation. I can't find the .Net 2.0 repair option in the control panel on Vista Ultimate, because this is part of the OS.

I'm thinking the SP needs only .Net 2.0 to install, so I'm uninstalling .Net 3.5  so that there is only 2.0.

Update : This doesn't work either. Hoping MS sees the error reports and posts a fix for this.

Vista SP1 RC also fails to install through Windows Update. The service pack downloads, and the laptop reboots. The installation takes 3 stages, and about 75% into the 3rd stage, the installation fails and starts rolling back. There are no adverse effects because a restore point is created. I'll wait for the final release and attempt it again. The update takes a very long time though, so be prepared to spend about 2 to 3 hours on this.

My new Xbox 360 came in last week, and I have been spending a lot of time fiddling with it.This is my first game console because I don't have a powerful desktop to play games anymore. My laptop is my primary computer. Adding the xBox has got me thinking about a proper home network. I want to be able to play all the media on my laptop on the HD TV, through the Xbox.  I'm looking at power line networkingand the cheaper option of adding a second wireless router with WDS.

I'm connecting the console through my laptop using ICS temporarily, which involves taking my laptop downstairs every time I need to get on Xbox Live. I set up the Xbox as an extender to Windows Media Center (WMC) on the laptop. 

Windows Media player will play divx videos and HD videos in mkv files after installing the correct codecs . However, WMC will not play these by default. A registry hack will fix this.

The xbox doesn't  have the codecs to play the above formats even though it is streamed from WMC. The video should be transcoded to a format that can be played on the xbox usually wmv. Good if there was a way to download codecs from the Xbox live market place.

This is where a nice little tool called Transcode360 helps. Transcode360 adds an extra menu item on WMC to convert the video. This shows up on the Xbox media center too.

Clicking on this starts the transcoding process on the computer running WMC. Give it a few minutes ( more for larger files) and the video is ready to watch on the Xbox it all its 720 high def glory.

I'm a big fan of flight sims, and I'm looking forward to playing Ace Combat 6 when it's out next week. The demo is pretty cool. Wish there was Flight Simulator on the Xbox. I've got Forza Motor Sport 2 and Ghost Recon 2 to start me off.

I've got my new laptop mostly working my way. Spent last weekend installing all what I need. I skipped VS 2005 and went straight for Orcas. Got most of the applications I need installed. The laptop came with Vista Home. I had to upgrade it to Vista Ultimate before I could do anything useful with it.

The keyboard feels a bit clunky compared to my old laptop. Maybe this is because the keyboard area is larger and the base of the laptop is much thicker. Winamp crashes when trying to play http streams.  Can't figure out yet how to enable Integrated Authentication in IIS 7, to debug web apps with Orcas (works fine with the built-in web server though). Orcas needs to run as administrator. HD content plays well after installing the K-Lite codec pack.

File copy is DEAD slow in Vista. Doesn't seem to be able to re-connect to a wireless network after resuming from hibernation when DHCP is enabled. Haven't had any major show stopper crashes yet. I'll give it a spin for a few more weeks, and probably install XP.

And yes Live Writer froze 3 times while writing this post.