The other day I wrote about having to reinstall Patti’s laptop from the factory defaults because Windows started to indicate that it was no longer licensed. The good news is that I finally got the laptop running well.
After installing the 15 remaining updates before and fully processing the removed antiquated programs, Windows started to work again. After that it was a matter of “simply” installing the remaining patches. It looks six or seven reboots with around 60-70 more patches to bring Windows up to a fully secure and patched version. Two of the reboots were due to service pack installations; they also required me to visit the computer more than once in order to install the patch–I had to agree to a license agreement. Similarly, I was prompted explicitly to install both Internet Explorer 8 and then Internet Explorer 9. There was no way for me to indicate to the operating system, “Please install all of the updates and keep updating until the system is fully patched and secure.” In addition, it was not possible to do one batch download of all of the updates. The final several reboots only consisted of five or six patches each.
Once the system was fully patched, I was able to install a copy of Microsoft Office for Home and Students. That installation went smoothly. I also installed several applications using the Google Pack–it’s an easy way to install a bunch of applications without having to worry about updating them manually later. I believe her laptop is fully patched at this point. It appears to be snappier, and I hope that it will continue to work correctly.