i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

So ... OpSu 11.4 is running well on my new HP, thank you very much!  As for the stock install Windows 7 Home Premium edition?

Every now and then I actually boot to Windows for something.  Whereupon, aggravation sets in, of course.  Typically, the next step is hours of updating (as opposed to actual computing).  SP1 downloaded. Sp1 would not install because I have a dual boot machine, which (apparently) requires the system partition to be active. I therefore logged into my administrative account, found the disk management software, set the system partition to active and ran windows update again. WARNING ... WINDOWS WILL SPIKE GRUB (assuming you ever want to see your Linux install again, which I assume you do.)

...

I  had a strange recollection of having had to do this with Vista for ITS SP[whatever] updates.

And then, THE OTHER PROBLEM helpful helpers forgot to mention.  After the SP1 install GRUB IS GONE!!  So, we will need to have our Linux install disk handy or a Live Linux CD or something.

Get thee to a terminal screen.  (I used the "repair" boot on my OpSU 11.4 install DVD.  This boots to a console login for "repair" and I typed "root" as my login.  Don't know if the login user choice matters, but whatever.)

Useful series of commands to restore GRUB:

grub

find /boot/grub/stage1

[whatever it returns, in my case [hd0,5], use that info in the next command:

root (hd0,0)

setup (hd0)

quit

Then we can reboot and hopefully are back where we started out before the SP1 extravaganzo.