Why upgrades are so large?

edited April 2004 in Site Issues
I wonder why the upgrade version of an Operating System (e.g., Win95 upgrade, Win98 upgrade) is much larger (about five to ten times the clean installation version), when compared with the clean installation of that Operating System (at least in the downloads in your site).

As far as I know, upgrade versions of an Operating System should be much smaller than the clean installation version of an OS as it only upgrades specific files, and the rest of Operating System files is not exist in the upgrade as it is already exist in the existing system.

Comments

  • Also, one more thing:
    I suggest that you replace the Internet Explorer with the ready-to-install version (i.e., Beside the Setup program, all installation and program packages and files downloaded from Microsoft's server [using the IE Setup program] are also included).

    This, In my opinion, will make IE installation much faster and easier (we don't need to download a lot of files over slow internet connection [IE Setup only used _one_ connection to download those files] ); and this will make the Setup easily transportable (we only need to copy an archive containing everything we need to install IE, no more downloading). Plus, I don't think Microsoft will continue to provide the installation files and packages for older versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer in their server.
  • Erg, and where do we get the ready to run vers?

    -Q
  • It seems that you can't get it as a download, but you can make one.

    Here's how to do it:
    1. Extract the small IE Setup program to a new folder.
    2. Run the IE Setup program from that new folder.
    3. Accept the license agreement.
    4. Wait until setup is done Initializing.
    5. Select 'Install Minimal, or customize your browser'. Click Next.
    6. Select the 'Full' installation method (from the drop down list).
    7. Click 'Advanced', check 'Download only', Click OK.
    8. Click Next.
    9. In this screen, select all operating systems available (Type of system to install on).
    10. Change the 'Folder to download installation files' to the folder where the IE Setup program exists (the new folder in number 1).
    11. Click Next.
    12. Wait until all downloads are complete (may take a long time).
    13. After all downloads is done, close the IE Setup program. Then, compress all the contents of the folder where the IE Setup program exists (the new folder in number 1). There should be many new files (most of them are Microsoft Cabinet files) in that folder now (those files are the rest of installation files and packages required to install IE). You should upload the compressed file if you want to make this ready-to-install IE download available.
    14. Done.
  • We may do that...

    -Q
  • Well "." Your idea is nice, but what about older versions? They are no longer supported and that method cannot be used, we can only use the full versions that others have downloaded. And with IE they have differences between the OS's they install on, 98 and ME's IE's won't work on 2k or XP. As for your upgrades. They may use more space on the hard drive if the original OS is also preserved.
  • Only IE 5.01 SP1 that can't be downloaded. Other versions of Internet Explorer (IE5.5 and IE6) can be downloaded by the Setup program. (Although I am a bit unsure about IE 5.5: I tried to start the download and Setup can begin the download, but Microsoft's site mentions that they are not available anymore).

    By the way, after searching the web for a while, I have just found a pretty good website containing downloaded version of older versions of IE. Here is the URL to the website:
    http://softserv.murdoch.edu.au/pub/mswi ... tExplorer/

    This server is pretty good. Beside Internet Explorer, there are many other programs made for Microsoft Windows available for download from the server, at the following URL: (older versions also included)
    http://softserv.murdoch.edu.au/pub/mswin/

    I therefore recommend WinWorld to include the Internet Explorer in that website in next update (or at least a link to the website), to make the ready to be installed version of Internet Explorer available, as I have suggested previously.

    For the upgrades question, what I mean is why the upgrades download in WinWorld is larger than clean install ones (e.g., Why Win95 upgrades download is larger than Win95 Clean Install download), not about the required hard drive space. I found that the download size for the upgrade version of Windows, for instance, 95 is _ten_ times larger than the Clean Installation version. (does the upgrade version contains extra materials not available in clean installation version?)
  • IE is getting irritating, we may just drop all the IE 32Bit ones for Firefox (No guarantees). I have no idea why MS made the upgrades bigger.

    -Q
  • MS updates dont bother me.. only takes a few minutes.
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