Slashdot Mirror
Windows XP SP2 Still Rough Around the Edges
Megor1 writes "According to crn.com when they tried upgrading various computers to Windows XP SP2 RC2 3 out of 5 of the machines failed to come back up, and had to have both SP1 and SP2 removed via various hacks supplied by Microsoft. Sounds like it might take a lot longer for Microsoft to release SP2 if RC2 is any sign of how far they are along."
I installed SP2 on a vmware virtual machine. No problems with that yet.
Come on, I'm not crazy.
I find it Ironic that on Slashdot that it is considered good news that Microsoft has problems fixing security on peoples system. You would think that a technical community would want all the products to run smoothly. Because with MS having no security fixes then your network traffic is full of Microsoft Crap. See this is bad news because the general community will still have all sort of security problems with there PC costing them a lot of money. It is like a Pepsi Fan being happy that a major Coca-Cola plant blew up killing hundreds of workers. I hear a lot of Slashdotters go I just use the right tool for the right job, then when they hear that MS screwed up again then they are going hooray. I would think that they will be disappointed for having a lack of stable tools.
No I am a long timer on Slashdot, but I just wanted to point out the Irony.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is an exaggeration. Nobody here loves Microsoft's business practices, certainly not me, but Windows 2000 Professional is an excellent desktop OS, and the 2000 Server products are good too.
I've been running 2000 Pro since it was available, and I've put off installing XP even though I have a boxed copy of it simply because I don't see any possible benefit of switching from what's a fantastic stable yet flexible desktop OS.
Frankly, people who knee-jerk and say "it's from Microsoft, it must be shit" or words to that effect have no idea of how good a product Windows 2000 really is.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
No, it's RC aka Release Candidate - that means this is a candidate that is intended to be representative of the final release, and it's being put out there for public testing of the candidate before it's polished into the final. Or that's the idea anyway. An alpha or beta could be forgiven a 60% failure rate, an RC should never be like this.
I'm sure Windows XP SP2 is going to fix every known security problem, block pop-ups and make your cows give 10% more milk. But what about us non-XP customers? To this day at my company we're putting Windows 2000 on all new computers, and we're not about to change to XP anyime soon, looks more like never in fact (except for new laptops where it makes sense).
Last time I checked W2K was still on the list of fully supported operating systems for at several years. In fact, I've got black on white that we're promised security fixes at least up till 2007. Up until now W2K and XP have recieved new patches in sync, is this about to change? As they say, Microsofts worst competitor is their own older products, maybe this is a new way of "encouraging" upgrading.
It's like deja vu all over again.
You know what? The only people I ever see complaining about Clippy are Slashdotters who think it's still 1998, and that BSODs and Clippy are regular parts of the Windows experience.
I haven't seen Clippy in a default Office install in five years. Whenever he did appear, I--gasp--right-clicked on him and clicked "Hide," thereby causing him to never return.
Why do people still use criticisms from the past decade to criticize Microsoft now? I mean, really, what does Clippy have to do with SP2 RC2 causing some problems on some computers? For the record, I run SP2 RC2 on both my home machine and my laptop with no problems at all. In fact, bootup is shorter and performance overall is snappier, presumably because of all the recompiled system libraries (using the VS2005 compiler...SP1 was compiled with VS6).
Hm...
Am I the only one that runs Drive Image (or a similar tool) before running anything from MS Update?
Always.
I've had the thing crap out too damn many times to even consider updating w/o an image backup first.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
It's not that I disagree completely with your statement about slashdot being biased against microsoft, and I definately agree with your assesment of the article, but....
It seems that in the past year or two I've heard people whining about all the anti-MS FUD that happens on slashdot. Whenever someone (like yourself) has a good rebuttal to the parent story, it gets modded up for everyone to see, and everyone sees their complaint.
Now, I _might_ be wrong on this, but the fact that posts like yours -- that are exposing the truth behind articles like these -- are being seen more and more lately in the higher thresholds, is evidence to me that the community is willing to hear your "pro-MS" rebuttal, and therefore is not quite as closed minded as the generalization makes it out to be.
[Insert obligatory.. "This is Pro-MS, therefore no one will like me and i'll be modded as flamebait" comment here =P]
arcane for life