Installing SP1 - Personal Edition
I have compiled some notes from my installation of SP1 on my workstation. My workstation
specifications are as follows:
- Dell Optiplex GX110
- PIII 650MHz
- 256MB RAM
- Windows 2000 Professional, SP1
Pre-Installation
My first step was to read Brian Knight's article on SP1. It provided me with some
basic information as well as the link to download the Service Pack. I know Brian has
tested this pack in Beta for awhile, so I was anxious to see what he thought.
Next I followed Brian's link and started a download of the SP. Since I am on a T-1,
this went pretty fast, but still required 10-15 minutes. While this was occurring, I
browsed the bug list to see if any of my problems had been fixed (didn't see anything).
Once the service pack was downloaded, I double-clicked on it and it expanded into a folder
on my c: drive. It was nice to have the pack give me an option where to unzip it as
well as create the folder automatically. This little feature is missing from so
many installation programs.
My wife rarely reads instructions for anything. I usually peruse the instructions to
be sure I don't do anything really dumb, and so I decided to read through the sp1Readme.htm file.
Since this desktop has a test database I used to experimenting, I was not too concerned
about any other databases and only backed up my one test database.
The next step recommended in the readme is to ensure master and msdb
both have 500kb free. This isn't much space, but if I hadn't read the notes, I might
not be aware. The autogrow feature for SQL 7/2000 usually prevents space problems
(until the disk fills), but I like to check. With a SQL Server 6.5 service pack
upgrade, I didn't read the notes and ran out of space in master.
The next item I read mentions that the service pack can be installed without stopping
services. These services include the SQL Services. However, if you do not stop these
services, the setup program will reboot your computer. Kind of a handy thing to
know. Especially since I was making notes as I did this. I elected not to stop the
services to see what would happen and saved these notes before running setup.
Running the setup.bat started a wizard in the setup program.Thi is the standard
SQL Server setup that selects local or remote computers, the instance, contains a new EULA
(not sure why this is needed), and next the authentication type dialog.
Once I answered all the questions, I get a "setup is starting service and verifying
something. Then I get the "setup has enough information and can proceed" dialog.
This is a great dialog that verifies everything and gives you one last chance to
quit. One thing I noticed at this point is that my SQL Server is stopped. So a
note for production machines.
First MDAC is updated with v2.6. In order to do this, my local IIS service and
Outlook were stopped. Once I confirmed this was ok, the MDAC installation proceeded. This
completed and the SQL Server portion of the SP started automatically.
This completed within a couple minutes on my machine and then various scripts were
run by the setup program. This took about another couple minutes (including ActiveX
registrations and system updates). finally I get a dialog requesting that
I backup the master and msdb databases.
Lastly, I did get the "do you want to reboot" dialog. I did.
After rebooting, I connected with Query Analyzer and Enterprise Manager and verified
that I could access data, my packages and objects still worked and nothing appeared
disturbed. Since I had not been affected by any bugs on my workstation, I am not sure
if anything was fixed. But nothing was broken.
Conclusions
Overall, this was one of the smoothest SQL service pack installations I have
had. Of course, the SQL 2000 setup program was drastically rewritten from SQL 7
and seems to work much better. Next week I'll be using Brian Knight's followup article
from actual installations to upgrade my development servers and I'll be posting some notes then.
