Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

I did a really dumb thing.

Yesterday my backup failed, because of a device I/O error. I assumed (really badly) that the error was on the backup drive, and so proceeded to reformat it - losing all my backups in the process. My logic was that after I had reformated it I would try and run a fresh backup and if it failed again I would replace the disk.
It failed again, but this time I realised it was not the backup drive that was at fault, but one of the drives it was trying to backup.
I realised this because it was the drive that had all our music on it, and I was having trouble playing music, followed by even more trouble browsing the drive.
I should have been a bit smarter. This was the last of three disks that I bought all in one go from one shipment, same size and model, all 500GB Western Digital drives (I know, I know - WD are crap). The other two had failed within the last 3 months and been replaced. I just hadn't gotten around to transferring the data off this disk.

Not mine fortunately, though I have one laptop that I haven't been able to install the Service Pack on at all yet - will look at why later. (Update - I uninstalled the non supported language packs and then SP1 installed correctly.)

The point of this article is to provide a resource in one place of as many issues and resolutions for Vista Service Pack 1 installation problems as possible in one place. Note I will continue to add to this page as I get more information. It might pay to book mark this one using delicious or stumbleupon.

Microsoft Pages for Vista SP1

As reported previously I was unable to get the live office connection to work for me. However after checking out the Live Workspaces Forum today I found some help - installing an update to Vista worked for me.

I will post all the instructions provided as they cannot be linked to specifically and will get lost in a long forum thread.

This was posted by Kavitha R

Sorry to hear that you are having trouble with the Office Live Add-in. Here are a few things to try to resolve the issues:

HP Laptop nx6320 1GB RAM 1hr 50 mins - cleanup reclaimed ~800mb - running Vista Business

3 pcs all P4 2GB RAM ran in just under an hour - didn't check the cleanup savings - all running Vista Business.

1 laptop running Vista Ultimate refused to run the service pack as it said it didn't have right language pack (English) installed - which is bollocks but there ya go - cant argue with that. I will troubleshoot it later.

Vista 64 box not installed yet, the download of the service pack failed half way through - trying again now.

I haven't yet upgraded my main work machine - that's a job for this afternoon.

Links for reading

Windows Vista Blog - release notes

What to do when SP1 doesn't come down through automatic updates