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Windows XP SP2 Still Rough Around the Edges

Posted by michael on from the cheese-grater dept.

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."

2 of 613 comments (clear)

  1. Microsoft magic numbers by PIPBoy3000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Joking aside, there's some truth behind Microsoft and their versions. One of the developer's had a blog that talked about it in detail.

    Essentially, version 1.0 is a best guess at what the customer wants. Version 2.0 is started even before the customer sees the 1.0 version. Finally, customer feedback is incorporated into the 3.0 version and things might actually start getting useful.

  2. Uninstalling critical updates can also be easy by jesterzog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Very interesting how (relatively) easy it is to uninstall all service packs from Win XP:

    I was recently helping a friend to clean out her XP Home computer. Since she'd bought it no patches of any sort had been applied, and it was at the horrendous state where if she left it alone for a few hours, she'd come back to see a desktop popping full of porn advertisements.

    I downloaded all of the available critical updates from Windows Update and showed her how to run AdAware, which on its own detected and removed something near a thousand suspicious objects. We then took a look around places like the add/remove software section.

    At this point she got quite a shock because about half the listed programs were something called "HotFix". After everything that'd been frustrating her in the past months, she wanted to remove them all immediately. When you've spent the last hour removing porno popup and spyware programs from your computer, something called a "hotfix" does not look like it's supposed to be there. It took a lot of effort to convince her that a Hotfix is actually a Microsoft patch.

    It hadn't occurred to me until then that it's not a particularly intelligent name for what's supposed to be a security patch. Now I start to wonder how many other people out there go ahead and remove the hot fixes because they don't realise that they're not spyware. It'd be very much in Microsoft's interests to consider renaming their critical updates.