Slashdot Mirror
Windows XP SP2 Goes Gold
writertype writes "PC Magazine reports that Microsoft has released Windows XP SP2 to PC OEMs after a two-day delay. A package of stories, complete with an exploration of the new update, is here. The best way for users to get the update, according to Microsoft, is to have Windows Update turned on; a CD version will be made available." Reader Critical_ writes "With all the news of SP2 being delayed, it seems like Microsoft may have pulled a rabbit out of its hat by releasing RTM on its WindowsBeta site. Neowin has a screenshot of the download page and MSFN has the release information. The final build is 2180. For those who can't download it for whatever reason, Microsoft is giving away free CDs here. Happy installing."
Microsoft (almost) made it close to an original deadline? Whats next ... Linus will turn out to be secretly controlled by evil corporate overlord masters?
Steal This Sig
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/06/2 015257&tid=201&tid=128
C:\>
Hell reportedly experiencing record low temperatures.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
I'm a sysadmin mulling over exactly when 'enough people' will have tested it to deploy and roll out myself.
Jabba the Lawyer
Who's going to be the first to test it on a slightly less than legal CD key? :D
if this dog eats your homework?
Is it fascism yet?
Just because MS makes it available doesn't mean they've worked out all the bugs. They may have taken care of a number, only 1/5 or 1/20 or even 1/100 have problems, but that is still a huge number. I know I'm not deploying the patch at my site for at least a couple of weeks, until I see the articles of the after-effects.
Hmm...Does this mean Michael, Microsoft hater extraordinaire runs Windows in his spare time?
Why would he let me install it first unless he has windows himself to install SP2 later?
I think I've just exposed Michael has a hypocrite and windows user.
Now that the latest major release for XP is out, it is time to do away with this "Service Pack" nonsense. This versioning is confusing to end users and has always seemed like an attempt by Microsoft to pretend that their software wasn't bug ridden, it just requires regular maintenance the way a car needs an oil change. Hogwash.
The Windows Beta site is really getting hammered right now and giving 500 errors so don't be surprised if you can't get in. I managed to download it from eMule and I'm sure torrents will appear soon. The filename is called:
WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe
This is too weird. SP2 is released on the same day as this Slashdot poll
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
There are still enough of us who prefer Win2K to XP. There have been multiple remote vulnerabilities exposed since SP4. So how about rolling up the latest hotfixes and giving us SP5?
Wasn't this the patch "delayed" because it crashed 3 out 5 XP machines?
Guess i can wait a while to install it at work...
Microsoft customers have come to understand quite well what a SP is. If anything, their use of "rollup fixpacks" and things like that are confusing, albeit they're used mostly in the corporate context.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Hmm, if it really does fix the majority of the security problems in Windows, will this remove most of the motivation towards installing Linux or another OS? This seems like a possiblity.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
A friend of a friend would like to know..
Since version 5 of windows update refuses to let anyone with a corporate key download this, does anybody have any legitimate mirrors for SP2?
Also, apparently, neowin reports SP2 accepts those evil keys.
It makes one wonder.. why allow SP2 to install on pirated copies, but refuse to let people update via the windows update site?
276 Seeders, 1300 downloaders
60 seeders, 300 downloaders (Requires fileshack.org account)
6 seeders, 60 downloaders
1 seeder, 10 downloaders
p.s., I still hate the color scheme on it.slashdot.org
And MD5 sum would be nice, too. Post it here.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/05/174 2224&tid=201&tid=109
??!?!?!
I am still running Dos 5.0, because I'm pretty sure that Dos 6.2 has a number of outstanding bugs, and a possible security hole. I figger sometime around 2007 it will be safe to make the jump. Win 3.1 should be safe move around 2011.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I'm seeing torrents for several diff file sizes (266 and 271mb) ....whats the difference?
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
to see what grade of 'gold' this is...
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
I'm so excited and I'm just can't hide it; .. holy crap, 266 MB ?!!
I'm about to lose control and I think
Please join me for a minute of silence in a memory of our dialup friends.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Release it on Friday night after all the tech support people have gone home. Nice one MS, bloody classic.
Thanks! That means soo much to me, ::sniffle::
And saying... Red Hat 7.3, kernel: 2.6.x.y, gcc: 3.4.1, etc... is less confusing?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
According to a post on neowin:
Filename: WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe
MD5: 59A98F181FE383907E520A391D75B5A7
The one I'm getting on a torrent has a SHA1 hash of:
GOUP55QNJCXB6LCP52RHCENPLTWKHRHW
-- thalakan
I've been waiting, like, forever for that one.
WTF? I gotta buy something again just to get it to work right?
I've had the SP2 RC2 on my box for some time now. I'm actually surprised by how stable it has been. I've even been able to play Doom 3 with no crashes. I can't really say how the security improvements are, but the one thing that I have noticed is that wireless networking seems to have improved much. Also, it doesn't seem like the firewall was working too well (at least for outbound traffic).
SIGFAULT
WTF? do away with this "Service Pack" nonsense? I don't have any problems with service packs. I would much rather be able to install a single service pack than manually install 1,001 individual bug fixes one by one (probably with a reboot after each one). This versioning is confusing to end users. Isn't the versioning just like; first came SP1 and now comes SP2 and next will come SP3. What is confusing about that? I hate microsoft with a passion and I have plenty of legitimate gripes with them but I honestly don't have any problem with them releasing service packs.
Although I do seem to remember some of the NT service packs that really broke lots of things and frequently screwed up the systems so bad as to require a reinstall. Poorly created service packs suck ass but as long as they do what their supposed to do, fix bugs and maybe ad a few features then I don't have any problem with them. Obviously YMMV a lot.
I going to hold out at wait for the service pack for SP2.
(kidding)
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Windowsbeta.microsoft.com appears to be slashdotted...anywhere else this is mirrored? I'd prefer no torrent (even though a previous post of mine indicates im looking at them) because of connection issues (I get pathetic upstream, which makes getting good torrent rates difficult)
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
We actually got an e-mail alert today from the company that makes our phone system server and client software that said if we installed XP SP2 it would break their software. Oh, and they have a patch forthcoming for the latest version, which we've had issues upgrading too. I don't know if this is Microsoft's fault or the company that wrote the software, most likely a little of both, but we won't be deploying for a while. The patch for our version isn't going to be release immediately. How many others are having this problem?
Perhaps my issue goes back to the way Windows NT 4 stayed version 4 instead of incrementing up with the service packs. End users at my company never knew what their computer was running since all of the updates were done locally at the time.
I found this line interesting:
"Microsoft will use metered downloads to update users steadily without bogging down the entire Internet."
*Strokes chin* How do they do this, exactly? By IP? By Product Key? What determines when someone will get it?
Hopefully we'll see SP2 on Torrents soon.
It seems getting SP2 is right now harder than getting a gmail account
I believe MS engineers pulled the rabbit out of a place where the sun don't shine. Especially after Uncle Bill paid them a visit and threatened to pull their Starbucks machine out of the snack room!
Price for a laptop? $1500.00
Price for Win XP Pro? $299.99
Price for SP2? Free
Resinstalling Windows XP, all your programs, and all your data after SP2 renders the computer unusable? Priceless
-rt
Sass that hoopie Bill Gates. Now there's a frood who knows where his towel is.
Some people are like slinkys. They're useless, but it puts a smile on your face to push them down the stairs.
I just readed the original threads, and this popped into my mind immediatly. I mean, isn't it obvious?
I'm not looking to bash Microsoft, but "it's only spyware" will not be a good explanation when machines stop working out of the blue.
Just like there would be no need for kernel revs other than 2.4, 2.6, etc, right? Nothing ever needs patching except Windows, right?
scott
No no ... an MS 'upgrade' CD always costs just slightly more than what you might expect manufacturing and shipping would be (especially since its really just something that makes the product almost work as advertised)
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
This is the MD5 sum from WinBeta. (Found at neowin.net)
WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe 59A98F181FE383907E520A391D75B5A7
Yup, that is the official download's MD5SUM too. Be careful though, there are many trojaned copies floating around.
As per the Windows XP SP2 RTM press release this is how they are going to do it -
The timing for customers to receive the Service Pack 2 download through Automatic Updates depends on a number of factors, including the customer's Internet usage, location, language and the level of Internet demand for Service Pack 2. Automatic Updates uses spare Internet capacity to progressively download updates without interfering with daily PC use. Microsoft expects to distribute Service Pack 2 to approximately 100 million PCs through Automatic Updates over the next two months.
The progresive download feature being talked about refers to the "Background Intelligent Transfer Service" BITS. BITS transfers files using leftover bandwidth. For example, if you are currently using 60 percent of your bandwidth, BITS will only use the remaining 40 percent. BITS also maintains file transfers when a network disconnection occurs, or a computer needs to be restarted: When the network connection is re-established, BITS will continue where it left off.
Given the recent bad press, I think the PR guys (those not digging up old Vietnam skipboat veterans of Linus) at Microsoft won the battle of "missing another deadline".
And if memory serves, this usually means worse PR disaster when mom and pop's computers start blowing up because the engineers lost the day.
Serves them right if it happens. Not to mention, two updates released outside of the regular Wednesday schedule... I gotta change spagetti night now!
vmware ;)
Microsoft has been slashdotted.
I'm going to DISNEYLAND!!
Hm, I'm a retard. Please mod that down, since it's actually a German SP1 link (WTF?)
[insert witty comment here]
So does anybody know what we people with RC's are supposed to do? I've got RC2 of SP2, and I just checked the Windows Update site, but didn't see anything that hinted at installing the final of SP2.
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
Any direct link (ftp/http) mirrors for this yet? My bittorent doesn't work and my autoupdate isn't popping up yet either..
so, uh, whats the difference between this WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe download and the en_winxp_sp2.iso available on MSDN?
is it just the XPSP2.EXE file from that image?
The iso was posted this morning (8/6/2004 8:57:00 AM) and weighs in at 475.35MB !!! (just ~10MB shy of the size of the original Windows XP iso)
I agree with PCMag on this. Microsoft still doesn't get it. To continue the Microsoft analogy, they gave the bad guys a key to the deadbolt.
Looks like I'll be continuing to ignore the built in firewall in favor of a real one.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1631256,00.as p
End of Line.
hopefully the machine can handle a bit of slashdotting ; )
http://phb.engr.colostate.edu:28888
no guarentees how long it stays up.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Of the betasite's download page?? That's getting a little pathetic, seriously.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
Why does it say "XPSP2", then?
"but the only sure way we know to run an attachment that OE deems unsafe is to copy it onto a non-NTFS drive."
Meaning that Microsoft controls the files I send and receive on my own PC? I don't like that idea at all.
There are plenty of others. It's pretty scary. Some of it's on by default, others can't be shut off. I guess I'll be shopping for something non-windows, very soon. Any recommendations!?
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Guess what, jimbob? If you download all the individual patches it will take longer because some of the later patches replace some of the files from the earlier patches. It's better to have them all rolled into a single service pack.
Having a CD sent to you is a reasonable solution. It's not like if you have to wait two weeks for the pack you're going to get backdoored in the meantime, because you can still apply the critical updates while you're waiting.
If you're not happy with that solution, go find someone who has broadband and get them to download it and put it on a CD for you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It looks like it could be right, it's 266 MB. I'm getting a steady 400 KB/s on it, I'll check the md5sums against the torrents when it's done.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
it's real easy. Goto your /. home page prefs, switch to the low-res lite version. Works just as good, you get all the same news, etc, loads faster, no strange colors, no bloat, no nuthin but what you really need. Took me about 15 minutes to get used to it, now if I go back and use full flavor I think "I don't need all this stuff, just the facts ma'am". It's nice, give it a try!
I'd never trust any "RonnieJ" for a reliable MD5 checksum. A "RonnyJ," on the other hand, is a completely different matter.
# w
20:35:29 up 26 days, 21:32, 3 users, load average: 23.07, 13.65, 6.75
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
818d45103b2bc82a346da320d6abd4c3 xpsp2.exe
That does not match the claimed md5sum of:
Filename: WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe
MD5: 59A98F181FE383907E520A391D75B5A7
Who knows what it is.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
from someone who works in a college setting--all the kids coming to school will probably NOT have this installed when they arrive in 2-3 weeks. M$ doesn't seem like they will put in on windowsupdate for another week or two.
So, everyone gets to school, then installs SP2, and then things break....blech.
If you download all the individual patches it will take longer because some of the later patches replace some of the files from the earlier patches. It's better to have them all rolled into a single service pack.
Besides the fact that the service pack contains updates which I may not even have a use for, I understand what your saying here. However, it is a lot easier for me to download several small chunks over a long period of time than a 260+MB file at once. I dont have much of an aversion to downloading that much data at 28.8 (as painful and time consuming as that is), but it is a little risky to anything breakable in my immediate area if that file gets corrupted at 95%.
Obviously service packs have some use, but it would be convienient if the individual pieces were available also. For the download and also for choosing what pieces to install. (not every thing in that service pack is a security update, or a fix of a previous security update, and I highly doubt I want all that MS bloa^H^H^H^Hfunctionality anyway.)
mother of god...........
# w
20:55:55 up 26 days, 21:52, 3 users, load average: 45.87, 39.03, 27.88
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
It's XP, without all that stuff in XP you don't like.
And no service packs! Because they left out all the shitty stuff.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I diagree with your comments.
After all, the Mozilla web browser went from 1.7 to 1.7.1 to 1.7.2 pretty quickly, and of course many other components in Linux commercial distributions do need to be updated as security vulnerabilites are found and/or improved versions of the Linux components are released.
I have some firends, uh yeah, that's it, friends, that are running with XP PRO VLK and a bad key. They are out of town, leave their computer on, and have Auto-Updates turned on. Needles to say, they also leave their DSL connection up.
Any idea if they will still be able to use their computers on Monday morning? I've heared rumors that SP2 will lock you out, not only of your updates, but from logging in as well until you can provide a good key.
This message brought to you by Jack Schitt's Previously Shat Shit
You'll want to use the --deep option to make sure all your dependencies are in order like so:
emerge -uDv sys-kernel/windows-xp-sp2
Oh, wait a sec... I'm not even supposed to be here, am I?
Anyone know of major differences between this gold version and Release Candidate 2 of SP2 ?
I think this was modded funny because you recommended mandrake. I think I'll take windows over mandrake because even with viruses and spyware, it's still faster!
I know the parent is being sarcastic but I wish to inform those (hopefully few) sysadmins that are using automatic update for their company machines.
Use SUS. You point your windows clients to update from your SUS. Since you approve updates that will be placed on your machine you won't get suprised by an automatic update.
Funny? He wasn't being funny, it's insightful. The Linux version scheme is no better than the what MS uses, oh my bad, I mean M$.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
at work for about a month (RC 2, anyway, the beta version). Windows update has not worked since I installed it.
:-)
Obviously, the windows update issue should be fixed in the released version, and it must not be effecting everyone, or I presume they would not release it. But my sp2-rc2 had never done windows update properly (that is to say, it failed to install any available updates consistently, every time).
I uninstalled sp2 from that machine today, and I won't be putting it back till I hear some pretty rave reviews. Okay, maybe not rave reviews, but I at least want to hear that it works.
philcrissman.com.
http://134.129.142.12/WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.e xe
edu mirror. 100mbit, athlon 1800xp, 1gig ram. leech away.
Click on my name & look at my info box if you're curious about my background in science.
Yeah you get owned by Sasser...Faster than you can install service packs! This is, of course, on a screaming wet fresh install.
If Microsoft can release this service pack, then surely there is hope that /. can change this horrid color scheme.
save your logs.
if nothing else, it might be fun self-indulgence to plot out how fast and furious the requests came in.
-transiit
Not intentionally being flamebait, but can't it wait till Monday so that you're for sure your downloading the right thing and not some ankle bitter's bot script that's embedded in their copy of SP2?
--pete
Usually when M$ goes gold it doesn't mean a damn thing. For any M$ patch or software, it has to go...
.. ..
alpha
beta
release candidate 1
release candidate 2
release candidate 3
release candidate 4
IRC warez beta
msdn
gold
release candidate 5
GA
release to manufacturing
blue screen
release candidate 6
Now it appears to be down. I hope this anonymous coward gets some real life karma for this. I need my sp2 fix!.
- Signature, Not Today.
Is this the first SP to be delivered this way? Usually the user has to visit MS's site for service packs. I wonder if every user be it residential or business with auto-update on will be hit with a dozen pop-up boxes on configuring the new firewall, activeX, etc in a couple weeks or whenever MS sends it down the wire.
source
8/6 Release to manufacturing
8/9 Release to Microsoft Download Center (network installation package)
8/9 Release to MSDN subscription site (CD ISO image)
8/10 Release to Automatic Updates (for machines running pre-release versions of Windows XP Service Pack 2 only)
8/16 Release to Automatic Updates (for machines NOT running pre-releases versions of Windows XP Service Pack 2)
8/16 Release to Software Update Services
Later in August Release to Windows Update for interactive user installations
You've an MS in organic chemistry but you work as an Information Systems Coordinator? You must be an awesome chemist.
Oh, but you do spew lots of bullshit that is subsequently squashed by informed, sane replies.
You're a sad fuck man.
everything in moderation
When I last installed a Windows SP (for W2K), Windows Update was stupid enough to save the temporary files on my Linux partition which was mounted read-only.
I don't know how it was possible in the first place, but that's what it did. Then, when it tried to start the actual install process, it couldn't find mskrnl32.dll or whatever, and I ended up reinstalling Windows.
I've also witnessed the same behaviour on XP: I was downloading a small package from Windows Update and wondered why it took so long. It turned out that it was saving the temporary files over the VPN connection to a server share that was mounted at the time!
I think there's a pattern that can be found from those two examples: it tried to save the temp files to the partition with the most free space, regardless of the type of the partition. I wonder whether it still does that. Anyway, I'm making sure that I've unmounted every single share and partition except for C:\ when I start updating stuff from Windows Update.
"If I can't have a revolution, what is there to dance about?" - Albert Meltzer
zooooooooooommmmm!
There went the point! Sorry you missed it!
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
"btw. you need to realize how automatic updates work - you do *not* need to be an administrator to use it. They download in the background and and are made 'live' by a scheduled reboot overnight. You could have all your users as 'guest' and you'd still be hosed."
o .shtml
WRONG! *You* need to realise how Automatic Updates work. you have complete control over a lot of aspects of how it works and so don't have to have it download and install automatically and don't have to have it prompt non-administrative users
see http://www.jmu.edu/computing/security/info/susinf
When I tried to install SP1, it installed with no complaints (generated corp key), but upon a subsequent reboot, I couldn't log in. Windows spat an error message at me about not being able to authenticate and dumped me back at the login screen. Safe mode had the same result. Fortunately this was a brand new install, so I just started from scratch. I think I'll be passing on SP2, though.
So this must be hot. I downloaded a file of 266MB and I have this nice icon standing on my OS X desktop. Now what?
I think RonnyJ has it.... but don't be fooled by RonnieJ!
GP wasn't saying that is better, he was saying that it was not ideal, and that a better system could be implemented. A better system could also be implemented for Linux distros. Gentoo would be a bit hard though...
Not a sentence!
No need to cuss ;-)
Since you're interested... I actually am a decent chemist. I'm even published in a peer-reviewed journal.
But since you ask about why I work as an Information Systems Coordinator, that's a bit longer story. I started college early - in fact, I finished my Bachelor's in Chemistry when I was 18 & my Master's when I was 21. So as you can imagine, at that age, I wasn't certain what I wanted to do with my life! I'm a quick learner, so it was easy for me to master the UNIX (Well, Solaris 2.6, 7, 8, 9, Tru64, HPUX, Irix, AIX, Linux (Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake) & maybe one or two other flavors... mostly System V though, I wasn't too keen on BSD), Windows & MacOS operating systems. Believe it or not, my biggest weakness as an IS Coordinator is the administrative & managerial responsibilities!
As far as the thread you linked, it maintained a +5 insightful for a good 36 hours after I posted it. (It ate ~20 mod points within the first 36 hours). Those that agreed with my points moved on. Those that did not kept coming back as they received additional mod points and modded me down to flamebait. Oh well, I don't care so much about karma as I do opening peoples' eyes to the truth!
Wow. That's 96 more errors than I got last time.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Imagine what it's going to be like trying to download SP2 RTM when it's finally released. The first few who come accross it will have no problem getting. What happens when everyone who has automatic updates on automatically downloads a 266M file at 3:00 AM? I'm glad I don't have to pay for that bandwidth.
getting an over 40kbs download off this one right now...ty..:D
Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have film.
Does it run on Linux? Given that I just ran into the lameness filter, can we get a bayesian lameness filter? It would work better and not be nearly as annoying.
Not a sentence!
It's interesting how drastically different the Windows and Linux culture (or maybe I should say mindset) is amongst professionals. (Don't mark me as a flame/troll, hear me out...)
When Windows comes out with a new releases (Windows 2000, Windows XP, etc.), people tend to 'hold back' and wait to see if it breaks things. Even with point releases (SP1, SP2, etc.) there seems to be a fair amount of trepidation when considering to upgrade even a personal machine - after all, not only do you need to reinstall Windows, you also have to reinstall every fucking application, and likely delete or move files around that are in the wrong part of the fs tree that you want saved, or what have you. It can take a long, long time to do all this, particularly if the machine is a personal machine and hasn't been reinstalled in years.
Linux is quite the opposite, for the most part. New beta release? People hit the download servers like a rugby player hits the after-game party. Some folks (debian stable fans) might hold back a bit, but it seems like, for the majority of desktop users, they want the latest, greatest thing. Installing all the applications is, for the most part, trivial: set everything up to install, and click "Next", then come back an hour later and you're ready to go (once again, for the most part). The time investment is significantly lower to get the needed software installed (knowledge of how to do it not withstanding).
I recently had to reinstall a Windows desktop machine from scratch (full format). The whole process, from the insertion of the Windows disk into the drive, to the "fuck, I'm finally done. I need (another) drink," took nearly 4 hours due to having to constantly insert various software disks, continual reboots for software updates and driver finickyness, and this was a fairly modern machine (installing win2k, axp 2000+, 512M, 7200rpm 80G).
IMO, the best thing MS could do for Longhorn, now that they've supposedly fixed their security underpinning problems, would be to make a 'universal' install mechanism so that reinstallation of a system would be relatively trivial. Make a 'network install' wizard which would install the core OS, and then query a server on the network (or a local disk) which would contain directories (or disk images, I guess) of applications or games - whatever. It would then install the software without prompting for the serial, name, or what have you.
As a result, I would imagine that all software written for longhorn would then be required to use a specific 'installation api', so MS could have more control over security and other such things, in addition to simply being able to install it via this method. This whole process would, IMO, make reinstallation of Windows much, much more geek friendly, more friendly for repair shops (copy all the CDs the person has to the drive, enter their registration codes into a text file in the root 'software-to-install' dir, reboot the system and wait for it to come back up after a dozen or so reboots with a fully functional OS), or even corporations. It'd probably take a healthy chunk out of the reimaging software markets, as well as the 3rd party installation software (Install Shield or what have you), but IMO, it would be worth it if it makes windows somewhat less shitty in the useability dept.
I've got a Windows machine that I've got to fix this weekend - seemably broken by a virus which is possibly still resident, but none of the virus scanning packages are able to find it. Copy/paste doesn't work, a lot of control panel applets don't work, etc. I don't relish having to do each item independently.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It think you mean Iron Pyrite
You don't need a lab to make mud.
A package of stories, complete with an exploration of the new update, is here.
I naturally read, "exploitation" of the new update...
You've an MS in organic chemistry but you work as an Information Systems Coordinator? You must be an awesome chemist. You're a sad fuck man.
Pot meet kettle. Kettle, meet pot.
Speaking of things that are black, you're on the blacklist now.
I agree that the fact that you cannot resume downloads from windows update is a huge annoyance which diminishes the value of the service pack for the modem user. It's worth noting that occasionally microsoft rolls a service pack into an OS and sells it as the new "service release"... I would hope that they'd start selling xp with sp2 integrated to help people who buy xp new who are still on modems. won't help you but at least it shows an awareness of the situation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I like to think that he got it, and was agreeing with you.
Of couse, I like to think a lot of things; doesn't make any of them so...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Put SP2 on two machines
on one of my laptops, it worked fine. Done.
On my desktop, I can no longer see the contents of my second NTFS drive. Uninstalling SP2 leaves me still unable to see it.
Ugh, and it seemed like a decent upgrade besides that.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
So, anyone tried this with an AMD64 CPU yet?
:p
How badly does the new NX-feature on AMD64 break everything? I do know that you can exclude programs from the no execute-protection if they refuse to work, but if 90% of apps break until next update, unless I list 'em in some whitelist, I will most likely put off the update by a few weeks.
It seems to work smoothly on my 2nd computer (P4 2.67Ghz), but that's more like a sandbox with extremely common hardware components and almost no apps beyond web browser and few productivity thingys, so it can be formatted at will anyway. Bit scared of upgrading my main system - Adaptec SCSI controller, A8V Deluxe motherboard with both VIA SATA and Promise SATA controllers, Radeon 9800pro, tons of hard drives... it would be just much more of a pain to recover if, for example, the NX protection feature becomes a huge hassle until developers can fix their broken programs, and restoring my OS partition from backup would take over an hour... I guess I'm lazy
I wonder why they can't do service packs that are continuously merged into one service pack, date-revisioned, for easy download/burning/installing -- in addition to the incremental "hotfix" type updates they release.
People mostly up to date can do the hotfixes, people far behind could install ONE service pack and get current without downloading 25MB of updates *and* a service pack installation. Sometimes you can be talking 4 or more install, reboot, download, etc cycles just to get current.
It's not so bad. "wget filename" first night, "wget -c filename" second night (I download at night with wget batch files so I don't block the phone line), unless I go to a friend's house who has high speed internet and burn it to a CD. I can't use my USB key, it's 10 MB too big :o(
Installed it at home (got the CD from MSDN). No worries so far.
Good things:
Tools->Internet Options->Programs now has a manage-add ons link. About @#$@#$ time. Shows ActiveX, Toolbars, BHOs, etc.
Okay things:
The firewall seems better, but I'm not sure I'll use it over ZoneAlarm right now.
Funnies:
In a bit of hilarity, the firewall complained about Windows Messenger trying to use the internet and asked if I should block it...
Same with the ActiveSync Connection Manager.
Hmmmmmmm.
LOL. Open the RTM in Winrar or equiv, and go to either i386/ip/unattended.txt or i386/ic/unattended.txt there's a thread on Neowin about it.
They probably will bundle it. If you buy XP in stores right now, it has SP1 already installed out of the box.
-- Pauley
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again...
kb328874 - How to change the Volume Licensing product key on a Windows XP SP1-based computer