General guidance before installing Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2
Now that we’ve had the service pack available for a couple of weeks, I wanted to post a quick note for those of you who have not yet rolled out the service pack to your environment for things you can do before installing Service Pack 1 that might alleviate some headaches during your installation/deployment.
- Remove any unnecessary language packs from your system. We’ve seen a lot of issues where customers have installed all of the language packs and are hitting issues installing the service pack because they run out of resources on their machine. Long story short, if you don’t need the language pack installed, remove it. Information on these errors is here: https://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/error-C000009A-installing-windows-7-sp1 . Update: This has basically been fixed if you install the following KB beforehand: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2534366
- If you have a dual boot installation, make sure that your Windows System Reserved Partition is the ONLY active partition when you do the installation. This has been a pretty common issue as well. Dual boot installations with any Linux derivative seem to hit this the most often, you can alleviate this ahead of time by ensuring that Windows is the only active partition at the time of install. For these, check here: https://blogs.technet.com/b/joscon/archive/2011/02/17/windows-7-2008-r2-service-pack-1-fails-with-0x800f0a12.aspx
- If you’ve used any third party tools to “clean” your system you are most likely going to run into issues installing. For these, run the latest CheckSUR tool (KB947821) and make sure that it is at least clean. It wont find all of the issues caused by these tools but it can find some of them. If your CheckSUR report is not clean, do NOT attempt to install the service pack until you have those errors resolved. Info for these is here: https://blogs.technet.com/b/joscon/archive/2011/02/24/windows-7-service-pack-1-fails-to-install-with-0x800f0a13-or-0x800f0826.aspx
- If you have third party intrusion software, make sure its disabled prior to installing the service pack. This can cause the service pack to have issues when copying over files. Re-enable this after you have installed SP1. One of these is documented here: https://blogs.technet.com/b/joscon/archive/2011/02/28/error-0xc000002-when-installing-service-pack-1-for-win7-2008r2.aspx
- If you have group policies locking down specific directories in your environment, make sure that you don’t have them set on the component or driver stores in Windows. I have seen this a number of times now where there are policies active on the machine that lock down the component store (\Windows\winsxs) or the driver store (\Windows\system32\driverstore) and this causes issues with getting the service pack installed. Usually you can catch these because you will see an ACCESS DENIED error during installation in the CBS.log.
- If you had ANY pre-release version of the service pack or any Microsoft OOB tools installed, remove them before attempting the service pack. We’ve seen this a lot and it causes all different kinds of errors during installation. Make sure you get these old beta/RC versions off your machine before installing the RTM bits. Lots of content on these, but the main two are: https://blogs.technet.com/b/joscon/archive/2011/02/14/you-receive-exit-code-0x800f081f-when-attempting-to-install-sp1-for-win7-r2.aspx and https://blogs.technet.com/b/joscon/archive/2011/02/25/you-receive-0x800f0904-cbs-e-more-than-one-active-edition-when-installing-sp1-for-win7-r2.aspx
- If you have a lot of network filter drivers, uninstall some of them or increase your limit for them using the tips outlined here: https://blogs.technet.com/b/joscon/archive/2011/02/21/windows-7-service-pack-1-fails-with-error-code-0x8004a029.aspx
- Last but not least, just check the state of your machine before installing the service pack. You can look over the CBS.logs for any stand-out errors. Review your system event logs for any issues that you might see. Run the CheckSUR utility on the machine to make sure we don’t have any known issues that show up.
As always, rant here if you need to 
.
--Joseph
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Joseph, aren't you sort of assuming that users understand that the reason their SP update failed was due to 3rd-party code, and not, as they often perceive it, that unreliable monolith known as Windows? Furthermore that they then go buy a Mac from a company that is doing very well in the free market, but who takes a very different approach as to what code will run on their platforms? Who doesn't want Microsoft to use its position to improve the quality of 3rd-party code (and its own), by gently raising the standards bar occasionally? Anyway, isn't that the purpose of things like WHQL, UAC prompts and logo programs? To be fair, your refering also to the more specific case of interferring with online code. Ok, but for SP installs and antimalware that's half an hour every 18 months. Presumably these AV programs which i obviously enjoy criticizing have a reason for infiltrating systems so thoroughly that they can end up unintentionally interfering with servicing and only partially uninstall via the normal method. Surely this calls for a compromise solution, rather than just suggesting that people buy something else? You could say that about app compat and security - if your programs don't work with Standard User credentials, buy something that does! (And who hasn't thought that before?)Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Drew, No offense at all. I've been used to that attitude for a long time now. ;)Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"Dual boot installations with any Linux derivative seem to hit this the most often, you can alleviate this ahead of time by ensuring that Windows is the only active partition at the time of install. " I remember hitting this when installing Vista SP2 on such a system. As I remember, I tried installing it three times before I finally found the log entry explaining what was happening.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Daniel; I'm glad that worked for you. And trust me, your English is much better than my Portuguese :) Have a good one!Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Drew: For both #3 and #4 you're asking one software company for a way to make another software company write better code/uninstallers. While I 100% agree with the legal premise and the right of the OS to protect itself, the fact of the matter is, we really try and avoid touching others code if we dont have to. It's not always done for litigious reasons either, but because its up to that vendor to write better code. If you dont like their code, dont buy it. Thats the free market at work <G>. Your kernel example is exactly how we attempt to protect ourselves though, the other stuff is a lot harder. I appreciate the feedback, keep it coming. --JosephAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Nothing like a good rant to express a bit of frustration. :-) Firstly, it's a great summary Joseph. Thanks. Points following are inline with your numbers.
- In the WU description for language packs, add a warning that unnecessary language pack installations could complicate future Windows Update package installations, and that only required language packs should be installed.
- Why can't the service pack check that the System Reserved Partition is set active at the start of installation, and warn the user if not? If an SRP set active is a prerequisite for successful service pack installation, and this is not being checked for, then the service pack installer has a bug that should be eliminated before SP1 goes on Windows Update.
- Third party cleanup tools would not be as necessary if Microsoft provided a good one, preferably inbox. The Sysprep Cleanup Pass is a cleanup process, but too 'agressive' for day-to-day use, however i'm sure it could be tweaked into something like a general purpose cleanup tool - one that would not corrupt the servicing stack!
- Why doesn't the SP installer disable 3rd-party intrusion software when installation commences (informing the user via a balloon), and reenable it at the end, if it's likely to be a problem? Are there legal obstacles to this? From a users point of view, it would be great to see people being told that their expensive AV software was being temporarily disabled to allow an update to occur without issue. That might put a small seed of doubt into people's minds about this sort of software. The public is absolutely fixated on the idea that security is all about anti-malware programs, and have little idea about the issues these programs can cause regarding compatibility, plus the enourmous performance hit they incur. For most people, their AV package is their security. I try to explain to people the benefit of not running as an administrator in my best layman's language, and their eyes glaze over. Please start doing something with Windows that makes AV software look like a problem, and not just the security cure-all people believe it is.
- If CBS ever gets an ACCESS DENIED, could this be flagged in the registry, then when a later update fails, inform the user that a previous servicing operation had a permissions error on a protected system file, folder or reg key, and that they should check their lock-down policies?
- Does the SP installer remove previous versions of the SP, and if not, why not, and does it explain to the user how to do this?
- Enumerate the number of network filters, and if it exceeds MaxNumFilters, halt installation and explain the problem to the user, with a pointer to a Microsoft Support article.
- Logs like CBS.log are obviously very important when determining the state of a machine - at least as important, perhaps, as the traditional event logs. Does Windows need a Log Viewer, with appropriate highlighting and search facilities for specific logs?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Rob; 0x80070002 is a file not found error. Have you run CheckSUR on this install? I'm wondering if you have a missing manifest or if this is just a bad registry entry. If you havent run CheckSUR (KB947821), please do so and let me know the results. Otherwise, it would be best to post your logs to the Win7 forums so we can have a look. --JosephAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Drew; Yes, in a way you have to make that assumption. Obviously, we're not perfect either but I think many look at Microsoft code as being generally well tested. Sure, we hit other issues outside of our tests passes once it gets into the "wild", thats just the nature of this business. We try and address those as quickly as possible and that's one of the reason I wanted to get information out as quickly as I know about it here. If Microsoft went the way of Apple and controlled the hardware and software platform, I dont know that it would be a better option quite honestly. I'll be the first to tell you that I think Apple hardware is amazing, I'm not a personal fan of everything they do in their OS, but I would imagine thats expected. However, going to the Apple model offers less consumer choice in the end and less competitive pricing overall. Does it potentially offer a better operating system experience? Perhaps. But less choice would not be my personal choice. I know the numbers we've had downloaded to this point and when you consider our install base, the overall number of issues is actually pretty small.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
No problem nerp, glad this was of some use to youAnonymous
January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
@Drew: Good feedback as always. Most of your feedback has good ideas here, some arent practical though for large scale. I'll address a couple here, the rest I will look into as feedback items with the product group. For #1 and #2, I'll take those as feedback items. Not much I can answer there. For #3, what kind of tool would you like? I've never really understood the use of driver cleaner utilities on installations because they have caused problems as long as I have worked here. If you can give me a true need for something like this, I'll see what I can do. #4 is easy, we'd most likely be in court if we disabled other vendors code. #5 is harder because the access denied could be coming from anywhere, holding the value in the registry might help in popping up the problem but not in solving it. #6. Answer: No, it doesnt. It supersedes the packages and leaves them there, we dont remove them in case you want to uninstall and rollback. #7 and #8 are feedback for me. I'm working on an idea for #8 but it's hard to implement on a large scale so I have to see what I can figure out for that. @someone: No, if you have the standalone package you dont need anything else. The SSU update that ships prior to a service pack installation is already included in the standalone (thats the package you were talking about with Vista) @Ed: No, this shouldnt be an issue but I have not specifically tested the scenario. We typically honor our own partition markers.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Livia; I havent seen you comment before on my blog so I dont know what errors you were actually experiencing. If you can list those out, someone here might be of help. --JosephAnonymous
January 01, 2003
@someone: I forgot about the two pre-reqs in Vista, that's what you were referring to before. My bad. We dont have those anymore :)Anonymous
March 08, 2011
I have downloaded the network installation package as I need to update many computers. My question is: can the full SP1 be installed directly on Windows 7 RTM with no updates installed or does SP1 have any prerequisite updates like Vista SP1 had? Are there any updates which MUST be installed on W7 RTM before SP1 network package will install? If so, where is this documented?Anonymous
March 08, 2011
What happens if you have a dual boot between Win 7 64-bit and XP SP3. Does #2 still apply?Anonymous
March 09, 2011
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March 09, 2011
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March 16, 2011
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March 17, 2011
Slipstreaming, or lack thereof. I just don't get it! Having to reverse image a system after installing a service pack to get it to merge with the install disc? What a pain.Anonymous
April 13, 2011
I've never seen a SP also rots from Microsoft! 5 attempts to install on 5 different machines and 5 failures. 1 with an OEM installation (HP). 2 with complete facilities standards. 2 with customized preinstallation. In neither case did the service pack installed!Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Hello! I am in Brazil. I didn't speak english, sorry. I solve the problem here described with the exclusion of the vido driver and deleting it of the system. SP1 go normal after this. At finaly i shear a new and adequate driver for my video and this didn't are easy but i am sucesfuly. Sorry my bad comunication words.Anonymous
October 15, 2011
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December 10, 2011
Been spending days trying to install this on my laptop but still have been running into problems. It will say it's successful after installing from windows updates, then seconds later it will tell me that I have to install Service Pack 1 again. I am confused as to what the problem is. I have checked my CBS logs and the two errors that show are : (f) CBS Registry Error 0x80070002 Microsoft-Windows-Help-CoreClientUAPS-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd646.1.7600.16385 failed to get CurrentState (f) CBS Registry Error 0x80070002 Microsoft-Windows-Help-CoreClientUAPS-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd646.1.7600.16385 failed to get Visibility I have tried to manually install and tried your guidelines as well. If you have any suggestions that would be great.Anonymous
February 07, 2012
isto e falta de respeito com o consumidor. a gente compra um sistema original, e dai nem consegue atualizar. parabéns microsoft. e viva o linux axo que eu vou aderir ao linux pelo que vi e mais facil. do que o windows sete.Anonymous
March 14, 2013
hey ...i have installed service pack 1 ...n every file that was shown on win update....in my installed updates service pack 1 is shown ..but when i open winver or sys properties no info of sp1 is there .....so m also unable to install ie10...could u help meAnonymous
May 21, 2013
спасибо за разъяснение. после долгого хождения по мукам, снеся все ненужные обновления, программа наконец стала включаться. до этого ее загрузка происходила в лучшем случае в три этапа: 1 этап - долгое включение (6 минут) 2 этап - программа сама себя тестировала и 3 этап - либо комп умирал, либо приходилось в течении 20 минут просто его перезагружать...., что не всегда оканчивалось для меня благополучно, чаще приходилось сносить программу и устанавливать ее заново. спасибо и с уважением. удачи.