Updating Vista PC w/o internet

[Jordan1]

Soon I will be tasked with updating a relative's Vista machine. As I understand it, it is lacking many updates--mainly anti-virus and Windows updates. This is mainly due to being stuck on a slow 56k internet connection. It hasn't seen a high speed internet connection for at least a year. There are too many, too large of update files to keep the machine up to date. Taking the PC to a high speed connection is not a option. So, I am currently loading up a USB drive with anti-spyware and anti-virus software. But then there is Windows updates. The Microsoft Update Catalog allows for individual update downloads. I searched for "vista security" and got 317 results. There is no option for browsing the updates, it just allows for searches. What's the best way to do this? Download SP2 and then everything post-SP2 that I can find that applies to a 32-bit Vista install?

I've got the setup files for the following programs ready to install:

MSE + this
Malwarebytes
Superantispyware
CCleaner
Spybot

Plus some others:
Firefox 3.5.5
Acrobat Reader 9.2

Anything else I should get?

 

[alphanumeric]

Do the latest service pack first for sure. Make sure you get the full standalone install version. If you have installed SP2 on your machine you can check your update history to see what updates have been done since it was installed. At least it's some place to start. Downloading them one at a time is going to be a pain. Installing them one at a time will also try your patients. Be prepared for a lot of reboots. You may want to setup the PC to auto logon to speed things up if it currently requires a password to logon.

 

[bigdogchris]

You can install SP2 then run Windows Update and only choose the small updates that won't take long on dial-up. Something's better than nothing. Plus while they are downloading you can install/update other things.

Plus I don't know why you are putting Firefox on the system but I'm assuming they have IE so maybe update to IE8 since it is faster and basically looks the same. I don't change browsers on people who don't know what they are looking at just because I like one better. I try to keep things as simple as possible and telling them to use something different (for no reason they would even notice) isn't a good idea. But maybe you're different.

 

[Jordan1]

Thanks for the responses. They are already using Firefox, so I'm just making sure they are up to date. I would guess with FF+ABP taking out some annoying ads browsing will go a bit faster for them as well.