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Windows XP SP2 Impressions
A roundup of concerns and problems with Windows XP SP2 from the early adopters: Many, many users are reporting problems with SP2 limiting outbound TCP/IP connections. This appears to be nailing anyone who makes heavy network use of their machine, including especially users running P2P applications. A Microsoft blog rounds up some reports, as does SANS. Microsoft has objected to people helping them distribute SP2.
Your list of 'impressions' is nothing but bad things people are saying. Any links to the other views?
If not, simply change the title to "Bad things popping up with SP2" or something to that effect.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I've had no problems yet to report; the only thing that pissed me off is it reinstalled windows messenger after I had already uninstalled it.
Other than that it's fine; I turned off the firewall; I'm already NAT'd and have limited ports of entry anyway.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Who knows how people mess with SP2 before distributing it?
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
Just so there isn't a bunch of FUD being spread, the limit is on INCOMPLETE outbound connections. There is no limit on COMPLETED connections. This should only affect network scanners such as nmap.
Yet another reason to BUY A FUCKING MAC. Jay-zus.
sulli
RTFJ.
I was wondering when they'd do that. It really bites into their sales if someone buys a 5-user license of XP Pro, and runs, e.g. Samba on it to serve to more than five people.
This is just one way to get around that.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
XP SP2: Are P2P, Port Scanning, and Port-Opening Programs Slower?
Check for the error code!
By design SP2 limits the number of simultaneous incomplete outbound TCP connection attempts. Who cares? This mostly stops trojans.
Run the event checker as described in the article above. You'll prove to yourself that you don't have a problem.
... you can disable it with this.
Of course Microsoft does not want people to distribute sp2. Any number of backdoors or things of the like may be added at any step along the way. The safe way is obviously straight from Microsoft.
This is just another shining example of how Microsoft shoots themselves in the foot on every rollout. My college isn't even deploying SP2 on their new faculty/staff desktop builds.
I read through some of the "reviews" linked through a MS employee's? blog. They were mostly people saying that the install went well but they have minor issues with it (ie slow downs).
Personally I have installed it and have been using it since I learned of its release on Slashdot a couple weeks ago. It's nothing impressive for me but I didn't notice any slow downs.
I griped about my personal issues with the updated "features" and the nagging it causes.
YMMV.
this is slashdot after all, the place where biased reporting has been invented
this place should be called sheepdot
I have had no problems since RC 1. I for one applaud Microsoft for turning the firewall on by default and creating a central security control panel for all users to use and understand.
Such as Norton or whatever, be aware that if XP's firewall is turned on (as it gets turned on by default in SP2) you won't be able to hit the 'net on that PC.
-Markvs
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
There are numerous unconfirmed reports coming primarily from the nmap mailing list that SP2 has removed support for raw sockets. However the ping and tracert utilities, both of which use raw sockets, still seem to function correctly. Perhaps only signed executables can use the raw sockets interface?
Any idea when Microsoft will be file an injunction to stop SP2Torrent from distributing SP2? Its probably not possible, due to the system of BitTorrent unless they take down all trackers, and there are bound to be some underground.
got sig?
Slashdot Editors,
Sooner or later you guys need to grow up. Suggestions:
1) Replace the broken windows icons with something more professional.
2) Create a Windows catagory.
Seriously, its getting tiresome.
While the reason is valid, I don't see anything about if/how this is user configurable. It would be nice if you could actively turn this off, and/or grant certain programs (doom3, kazaa lite, iTunes, etc.) to have "unlimited" access.
Then again, this is all conjecture, because I haven't installed it yet and don't know if this actually is possible. Someone care to comment?
The BBC has a pretty good article about it, entitled "Concerns over key Windows update". Seems like there are plenty of things going wrong..
I hope no one that reads /. is applying SP2 to any critical systems at the moment. At least without adequate backup. I thought it was just what tech people did, especially with windows updates, was to wait at least a couple of weeks before applying it. Why bother with the headaches if someone else can deal with issues so you don't have to.
Nuttles
Christian and proud of it
CHANGES DUE IN SP2
Pop-up ads blocked
Revamped firewall on by default
Outlook Express, Internet Explorer and Windows Messenger warn about attachments
Origins of downloaded files logged
Web graphics in e-mail no longer loaded by default Some spyware blocked
Users regularly reminded about Windows Updates
Security Center brings together information about anti-virus, updates and firewall
Protection against buffer over-runs
Windows Messenger Service turned off by default
The "Origins of downloaded files logged" feature troubles me a little. What do they mean by "downloaded files"? Do HTML files count as "downloaded files"? What do they want to keep track of and log my downloaded files? How will they know if I use another browser and download files using that instead of IE? What about the other files I download through File sharing applications?
What log "origins of downloaded files" at all? Does it improve security in any way? If they were logging keys/certificates of software updates (to AV software for example), it would make a little sense (but not a whole lot, it shouldn't concern the OS at all), but this feature sounds a heck lot more like a Big Brother OS thing, something like IE tracking all websites visited in a hidden+undeletable folder for the suits.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
So they added a firewall which asks you if a program can access the Internet, but allows all the Microsoft ET-Phone-Home software to bypass its own firewall, thereby giving all non-Microsoft software a built-in disadvantage to not being released by the monopoly.
Interestingly, this means that worms and malware authors need only make themselves appear to be Microsoft software (if Microsoft can bypass its own firewall, the credentials will be reverse engineered) in order to continue to spam from zombie boxes without informing the user.
Secure Computing, yay!
um... paranoia perhaps?
Laws are for people with no friends.
So let me get this straight. Microsoft determines that virii / worms / (insert other bad stuff here) use the internet to infect other computers. So, to make Windows more secure they shut down TCP/IP? Isn't that overkill? I mean really, I don't shoot my kids when they get a cold just because he might infect someone else!
Is there a wayto kill the tray icon? the wcn??.exe gets killed by me, and relaunces itself. This is one of the few times google has let me down :(
Perhaps you should read further before replying. I saw many positive 'impressions' on the linked sites.
Ah. I've been trolled.
Move along. Nothing to see here.
What new functionality is added to this feature in Windows XP Service Pack 2?
Restricted traffic over raw sockets
A very small number of Windows applications make use of raw IP sockets, which provide an industry- standard way for applications to create TCP/IP packets with fewer integrity and security checks by the TCP/IP stack. The Windows implementation of TCP/IP still supports receiving traffic on raw IP sockets. However, the ability to send traffic over raw sockets has been restricted in two ways:
TCP data cannot be sent over raw sockets.
UDP datagrams with invalid source addresses cannot be sent over raw sockets. The IP source address for any outgoing UDP datagram must exist on a network interface or the datagram is dropped.
I bet his "I told you so" rant will be entertaining.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
... yet the articles that are linked are mainly positive.
Odd.
Read the SANS page mentioned in the article. Well, unless you opt for the RedHat/Suse/Debian patch. The experiences on that page are probably the most comprehensive collection of possible issues. As always, the ISC managed to stay to the point without much hype and crap.
This was from the HTBugTraq mailing list a few days ago.
To: NTBUGTRAQ at LISTSERV.NTBUGTRAQ.COM
Subject: XP SP2 - Statement of the NTBugtraq list
Ok, so I feel like I need to do this, hopefully its understandable.
1. XP SP2 is the most significant security effort Microsoft has ever produced. Granted, it may not be a "silver bullet", or solve all problems, but it is significant in so many ways that we as a security community cannot fail to acknowledge it. I admire "discoverers" as much as the next, but before XP SP2 can be written off it will take many, many, vulnerability announcements.
a) IMO, this is the first time that Microsoft has put security over existing, and frequently used, features.
b) IMO, this is the first time that Microsoft has accepted the fact that their choice is going to lead to "some" incompatibilities.
c) IMO, this is the first time that Microsoft has taken a stand against ISV who are definitely making money out of some features they (MS) made available to them.
2. I, at least, as NTBugtraq Editor, believe we, as the NTBugtraq community, need to stand behind Microsoft's efforts. That means we need to continue to endorse XP SP2 despite what problems have arisen or may arise (within obvious reason.) The media is only going to state the problems. They cannot appreciate, nor do they believe their customers are willing to pay for, stories about XP SP2 successes.
So, I want to hear from you, every one of you, regarding XP SP2 success or failure. Obviously, I want those stories in as much detail as you can provide.
There are, no doubt, some (many?) applications which will not be compatible with XP SP2. I say they represent Vendors who are not prepared to accept the responsibilities we've always felt they should have as reasonably security-minded Vendors. They've had lots of time to figure out how to make their apps compatible, and have *chosen* not to.
I offer any Vendor who feels Microsoft left them "in the lurch", regarding their problems with XP SP2. a forum to express their problems.
Equally, I offer all NTBugtraq subscribers a place to state the problems they are encountering with an ISV application.
It is extremely important for corporate environments to get XP SP2 deployed to all home systems running XP. Let's make sure the media has the right information.
Cheers, Russ - NTBugtraq Editor
Check Here for a fix.
There's both a downloadable patch as well as manual instructions for patching by hand for the ultra-paranoid.
I just installed SP2! N....o........P....r....o....b....l....e....m....s ........H....e....y........E....v....e....r....y.. ..t....h....i....n....g........i....s........g.... o....i....n....g........s....o........s....l....o. ...w.......-Connection Refused-
I LIKE TOAST!!!
According to SANS (link above), only 6% has been forced to rebuild their system after install. Not too shabby!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I have a view. It hasnt caused a problem on any machine in my office, and I can only say that my personal machine at least "feels" more responsive.
Look, this is slashdot. They aren't going to be objective. For years the whine has been "MSFT default security is teh suck". MS releases a service pack that locks the boxes down reasonably well. Now that's something to complain about: "my kazaa is teh broked!"
Limiting outbound TCP connections to something sane make sense. Let the extreme P2P kiddies relax the rules manually. On the majority of desktops (not SERVERS) out there, an inordinate amount of outbound traffic is a sign of something bad, like a backdoored spam relay or the machine has been taken over as a DDoS drone.
SP2 crashed a lot of machines that were already exploited. Good. They were already broken. Now those guys can go to Best Buy, who will format and reinstall for them, juice them up with SP2, and there's one less source of SPAM/DDoS/Worms/stupidness.
IMO, SP2 was a huge step in the right direction, and confirmation to me that MSFT is doing more than paying lip service to security.
Of course, this is slashdot, and everything they do is wrong.
It's worth noting that I've never borked a windows box installing a service pack, all the way back to win 95. On the other hand, I've lost track of how much time I've spent cleaning up after typing "emerge -uD world". I thought I'd mention that so I can ensure I'll be modded troll. It's true, though, I swear it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Said article mentions that "..But the overall reports about SP2 were broadly positive." How is it that there are plenty of things going wrong?
I've done the XP SP2 upgrade myself just fine.
SP2 limits to 10 concurrent TCP connections ! A patch exists to break this f*cking feature: http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=20 0828
A have another problem with the SP2: sometimes, after a new reboot, it says my computer is not safe because the Windows firewall is not activated although I have checked the box to say that I use another firewall...
...even if it isn't true.
Ya'll complain that Microsoft doesn't care about security, but when they release a MASSIVE security patch, you try to find (and if that fails, fabricate) any and all tiny inconveniences it causes.
As others here have pointed out, it doesn't block ALL outbound TCP connections, just incomplete ones. Would it kill an editor to come out and say for once that "Microsoft did a pretty good job here."?
And no, I'm not new here.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
But congrats anyway Slashdot, on your unwavering anti-MS FUD machine and for always prominently displaying only bad reports about certain products, and only good reports about others. Does your bias know no bounds?
- Things truely do seem to be snappy. I am not sure where to attribute this, but it is welcome.
- My notebook has wireless which had the annoying habit of showing that there wasn't a wireless connection (the disconnected red x) coming out of hibernation even though it was fully operational. That appears to be fixed.
- I was afraid that the firewall would prove to be annoying, but it actually works pretty well. When I load ICQ, Activestate Komodo, or other applications that try and used blocked ports, it pops up asking if I want to unblock things. The old SP1 firewall didn't do this.
- IE's popup blocker is pretty slick. It will show a little dropdown area above the current page asking about the popup, if it should be displayed, etc. Neat. I do wish Firefox would do this instead of the small icon in the lower right of Firefox's window. It isn't enough to make me stop using Firefox, though.
Now, for the stuff I find annoying.- Their Windows Security Alerts interface isn't compatible with my corporate Norton I have from my work place. It isn't a big whoop, but I am surprised they don't work together.
- Some of my folder settings have changed. I am not sure why, but Microsoft feels the status bar shouldn't be on by default. To hit this point home, it changed it back to disabled after the install. Come on.....
- Along those lines, they decided to mess with my sound scheme. I normally turn all of that off, but sure enough after reboot it is back in all its glory!
- A lot of the wireless stuff has been funneled into wizards, need to find a way to turn that stuff off.
- IE and PNG is still pretty broken. Alpha doesn't work, and that problem where the colors are slightly off of what they actually are is still there. You would have thought that they would have addressed some of that stuff!
There you go, a user's point of view. Take it for what it's worth....Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
I noticed a moderate slowdown (of about 5-10k/sec) with the built in firewall enabled... sure enough when I disabled it and just relied on my NAT'd network with a firewall built into the router, my BitTorrent sped right back up!
I can see how this firewall would be extremely useful for the computer illiterate person just using Windows for minimal usage, but I'm also very glad that I could turn off the firewall very easily and get Windows to stop bothering me about it being off with a simple check in a checkbox.
How do I resolve these issues?
Stop the application that is responsible for the failing connection attempts.
Dont both trying to fix it just tell them to close down what evers cauzing the problem who cares if you know an operating system is their to let the users run programs
A psychopath can't tell the difference between right and wrong. A sociopath knows the difference - he just doesn't care.
I installed SP2 on a warez copy of winxp and had no troubles, but installing it on a legit copy caused it to freeze at the boot screen requiring me to scrub windows and start again. Well done M$.
Since installing SP2 I can not longer send to or receive from my phone via IR. I'm also no longer able to sync over bluetooth b/c it messed w/ the widcomm bluetooth software, but I think I've found a fix for that...we'll see.
XP, even the pro release, is designed for the home and small business user, at most. It's not a robust server solution, Billy G's bangers have other products for those uses. If you're 1337 enough to max out the SPI algorithm, changing the security settings won't be but a thang.
Aside from a hardlock issues (whose problems ultimately point to the authorization/security software, not the OS), I haven't seen anything more than a little grumbling for the small business types I've upgraded. The sense of security (pun intended) I get from a more real firewall being in place for them more than outweighs the costs.
If you're one of the 30 or so Tablet PC users out there, the Lonestar package in the upgrade (just for the T crowd) makes the upgrade a no brainer-- almost a Win 3.11 to Win 95 kind of experience, moving the look and feel away from a Palm experience and off into its own realm.
Of course. But Microsoft warned everyone that SP2 was more concerned with security than it was with compatibility. The fact that some custome written software breaks should not be a surprise to anyone.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I'll give you my impression, because mine is positive. I've not noticed the limited tcp connection problem, the firewall works and doesn't completely suck (as basic as it may be), and overall stability is pretty good. The anti-virus reminder thing is obnoxious, which is probably good for the average user. The wireless network stuff screwed up my wep settings, but the wireless config tool is a huge improvement. I haven't used IE on that machine yet, but I didn't use it before, so I wouldn't know what to say is improved. I am planning on stress testing it this weekend before setting it up on a few other machines. I've seen one sp1-related crash not happen in sp2, so something is different. It has not broken any of my applications and I do use p2p programs daily (though only shareaza, bittorrent, and direct connect). I've criticized MS many times before regarding Windows XP, but I do believe they've made some steps in the right direction, and despite the SP2 problems, MS did specifically warn that SP2 will break programs.
And you can still get secure, by running this tiny app.
SP2 has been fine for me, but it's turned slashdot puke yellow!
It must be a Microsoft conspiracy.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
I got the beta version about a month ago and have been using it for some time. Since then I have noted that that "ikernel.exe" has been corrupted and I can't install anything. [been all over the MS help pages as well as 'installshield's', to no avail]. Also, I can't seam to search my hard drive [right click (C drive) > search > nothing happens ]
Highly annoying, and even our sysadmin couldn't get it going. Anyone else experiencing this?
I hate my sig.
When 49% of installers have problems, the bad reviews tend to crop up. I submitted a story about how 30% of installers reported "minor problems", like non-Microsoft browser incompatibility (the other 20% presumaably had major problems). So this story is actually spinning the SP2 problems more blandly than half its users would say themselves.
--
make install -not war
How do I resolve these issues?
Stop the application that is responsible for the failing connection attempts.
Suprnova has a real solution. It replaces the driver, apparently.
M$ Lawyer: But `gcc
I installed XP SP2 earlier this week. As far as I can perceive, the PC is running the same as before. Of course, I disabled the firewall, antivirus nag feature, and auto Windows update.
I'm definitely not a pro-MS guy, but this anti-MS stuff gets to be a bit extreme sometimes.
My preferred OS's? Netware at the server, XP or Linux at the desktop.
Self awareness - try it!
Security by definition must limit functionality. The best you can hope for is that the functionality limited is less valuable than the security gained.
Microsoft management has finally realized that in order to avoid the gigantic fiascos of the past year's worms, they have to limit some functionality. My guess is Microsoft engineers have been telling their management this for a long time, and finally, they were heard.
M: Is our product secure?
E: The only way to improve security is at the expense of features.
M: No way. Features sell the product.
M: We need to patch this security hole.
E: The only way to improve security is at the expense of features.
M: I still can't accept this.
M: Please, dear god, do ANYTHING to fix these security problems!
E: The only way to improve security is at the expense of features.
M: All right, all right! Do it!
Well the OpenGL tooltip bug is fixed. That makes me very happy. Prior to SP2, if you had an OpenGL app open, tooltips did not refresh correctly, often displaying a previous tip. A fix apparently exsited for a while but MS wasn't distributing it easily until SP2.
Bluetooth seems more reliable than the implemention that was shipped from Belkin with my USB bluetooth device. It does seem to have fewer services though. For instance, there is no way to send a contact to Outlook from my phone or vice versa.
Can you blame them? Untrusted sources and all that?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
i'Ve installed it on 3 pcs so far and it seems subjectively speaking (no i dont waste my time doing benchmarks to jerk off to) its gotten faster.
I'd hardly call having to go to a control panel and explicitly opening an (incoming) port "nailing" anyone. It's the right thing to do.
Microsoft did this well. The firewall has some nice options (like the ability to open ports only for the local network) and is very easy to use. Nobody got "nailed."
Best Buy can have you arrested
SP2 will make Windows more secure. SP2 is a huge improvement in the security arena for Windows. Despite what many poster have said about the TCP/IP outbound limit, it is a good thing. When a new worm tries to propagate it tries tons and tons of IPs in a short period of time which most of them won't be work either because the node is not on, firewalled, nothing assigned to that IP, etc. but Windows recognizes these fast attempts to "broken" IPs and then enforces a limit on them. This would truly slow down past worms.
Now this is the new differentiating factor. Windows has improved security enough to where it is a smaller comparison point when comparing it to Linux/BSD. The new big comparison point (besides price) is the ability to turn things off such as outbound limit rates and such. If Linux had widespread worms as Windows does it would be a good thing for the TCP/IP stack to limit "broken" outbound connections by default, but the key here is you would be able to turn it off.
if sp2 presents such limitations, just imagine what this xp lite edition is like. "No son you can do http, pop3, and p2p all at once".
You need people like me so you can point your fuckin fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So what that make you? Good?
/ points at Microsoft icon....
I have not experienced absolutely any problem with SP2, perhaps with the exception of the terribly long install time -- it took 1-2 hours on my relatively fast machine (the backing up of files is not fast at all).
For the normal "Joe Average" user there won't be too much of a difference -- a simple reboot and the system looks just the same. IE has the pop-up blocker, which has a semi-intuitive way of adding a sites to the white-list and is a bit imperfect, IMHO (if the pop-up displays a page which has a different URL than the originating page, then the "normal" user will be confused why adding the URL of the originating site doesn't work and the pop-up still doesn't display... this is the case even for subdomains of the same principal domain).
The firewall is pretty nice, the default being to ask when some program is trying to access "the internet". BitTorrent works very fine with me and I haven't had any problems with IM programs.
So, overall, after 2 days of SP2 experience, I can only recommend it to people who still use XP.
Doomie
> When 49% of installers have problems, the bad reviews tend to crop up.
its fun pulling numbers out of your ass?
i installed it on 3 (non trojaned pcs. I'm a poweruser after all) pcs and not a single problem.
it even seems faster than before
Now they're just marking every article "IT" to piss off the color-scheme whiners...
Annoyingly enough, the "it" subdomain sticks with you if you click on any link in the sidebar that doesn't specify another section.
All's true that is mistrusted
I'd like to see these guys do an Windows XP impression.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Im not getting event log message with ID 4226, as I'm on router,with mac and PC sharing DSL,but I still get errors, and slowed down,as use bit torrent 24hrs/day(where I downloaded SP2 from)
I thought the problem was my telecom line?
I thought about upgraded to sp2 and my windows stuff stopped working, Wine did a really bad job of installing it... :-p
Look, this is slashdot. They aren't going to be objective. For years the whine has been "MSFT default security is teh suck". MS releases a service pack that locks the boxes down reasonably well. Now that's something to complain about: "my kazaa is teh broked!"
No, no, no, you've got that wrong!
It's
"MSFT default security si teh suck"
and
"my kazaa si teh broked!".
JEFFK won't be proud of you.
Her name was Karen, and we first met in Psych 101.
She was gnarled young thing; wheelchair-bound, head cocked permanently to her left, crusty fingers twisted into half-knots, long, atrophied legs, a seemingly endless trickle of spittle running from the corner of her mouth.
Despite her physical curse (MD, compounded by palsy), she was intelligent and very funny, and always added lively, in-sightful input to class discussions.
One might say she stood out from the crowd, in more ways than one.
About the third week in, I began to notice Karen staring at me from across the room. Each time our eyes met, she'd shyly curl her thin, purple lips into a smile -- the sort of smile that said "I know I'm a hideous, drooling freak but, please, Dear God in Heaven, won't you please smile back?"
Out of pity, I smiled back.
By mid-semester, Karen and I had become friends. I'd wheel her into the quiet hallways of the student center and we'd talk for hours about life's injustices, about our radically different childhoods, about health, about disease -- about the future. I often found myself weaving whole-cloth tales of my "hard" childhood, if only to buffer the sting of her heart-wrenching tales of a little girl with a incurable, crippling disease; the brutal taunts of the other kids, the endless hours of tests, treatments and therapies -- all of which she'd recount without a hint of self-pity.
As the winter passed and spring approached, Karen and I became exceedingly close, despite the suspicious leers of her roommate (a particularly bitter cripple named Jen) and the barbed guffaws of my beer-soaked buddies, who couldn't understand why I -- the most selfish, wretched womanizer on campus, would spend so much time with this diseased, rotting husk of a woman.
We started studying and shopping together. I helped her pick out her clothes and try them on, cooked for her, even helped her in and out of the bathhtub and scrubbed her back. And, although she consistently referred to me as the "big brother she'd never had," I could see, very clearly, that she was pining for more.
Needless to say, the thought of making love to Karen had crossed my shallow, polluted little mind on occasion, but was each time snuffed by the inescapable mental image of her pale, twisted limbs, her labored breathing, the stringy, clouded saliva running from her mouth... the image of fucking a sideshow attraction.
There were times when we were together that she charmed me to the point I wanted to take her in my arms and ravage her -- let her feel my hot, pounding heart against hers -- but the Images would flood as if through a shattered dam and submerge me in guilt-ridden disgust.
One hot night in July, my roommate, Captain Forehead, and I were hosting a keg party at our mobile home -- a gigantic, aluminum monstrosity we'd dubbed "Phi Kappa Trailer." The festivities were in full swing when I found myself, quite inexplicibly, thinking about Karen, undoubtedly sitting alone in her dorm room.
With a few drinks under my belt, I put on my Good Samaritan mask and decided that she might enjoy herself, so I picked up the phone and invited her to come to the party as my "date."
She giggled like a child, accepted, and I hopped into the old Dodge Charger to pick her up.
Once back, she asked Cappy (who, by now, had also grown quite fond of her -- tho' he stilled privately referred to her as "tire tread" -- don't ask me why) for a glass of beer from the keg -- the first time I had seen her show an interest in booze. After assuring Cappy that the alcohol wouldn't cross-fuck the effects of her meds, he tapped her a tall, frothy one.
It would be the first of quite a few, much to my surprise.
As the party went on and the drugs and booze flowed, the usual antics abound -- a fistfight out front, a visit from the Carbondale PD, a complete stranger taking his squeeze into Cappy's bedroom for a quick shag, some drunken chinese guy going into our medicine cabinet in search
I installed XP SP2 on a 16 month old XP installation which was at SP1.
I have a Intel Seattle motherboard with Yamaha sound and a SB Live!. After SP2, both sound systems were disabled and "No audio devices" shown on sound control panel. Device manager showed all devices present. I had to uninstall all sound devices (in the device manager), and then add a single sound system. Had to do it again after rebooting, again "No audio devices" found.
Also, after first boots with SP2, time-to-desktop and time-to-shutdown was horrrrible. Event log showed a bizarre COM+ error, after which I found one of the two COM+ services was disabled. After enabling the service, I've had no furthur problems.
Also, I uninstalled ZoneAlarm since the XP Firewall seems to do what I need.
I hadn't had a virus on my computer since 1995. Checks for spyware come up empty, probably because I used Mozilla and now Firefox.
I don't run XP but feel pretty safe running W2k. I'm not sure why ANYONE would be willing to jump onto the SP2 bandwagon this soon. Wait for everything to settle down. Wait for MS or 3rd parties to fix everything, then install it.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
But with MS updates you are guessing. Sure an update may fix a bug but what else have they done?
It is not that I fear patches being badly done, the SSH/SSL stuff had recently 2 patches right behind each other, but that I fear the "features" they added.
Remember this update really gives you a different product that behaves differently.
So a simple rule is to always first test a patch/update on a test setup. Then you test it for a length of time in scale with the size/complexity of the patch/update. I would suggest that SP2 is somewhere between a version upgrade and an OS rollout.
All I can say about SP2 is, thank god I am a unix guy. Yeehaw!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Let's wait until we have some real data, as in definitive reports that particular applications break.
I think for the next few months, maybe even years anything M$ does in the way of security will not be right in the eyes of many since they have such a bad rep. People will either complain about it being too loose, too tight, too leafy, too lumpy... But hey, give them a break, after all they're new to this security thing.
---
Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach
Those who don't know how, supervise
Grandparent said I turned off the firewall
You said They turned the firewall off????
I hope you don't read code like you read slashdot posts!
Infuriate left and right
Steve Gibson must be feeling pretty damn good right now, seeing as his whole "raw sockets are the end of the world" issue seems to actually have been fixed in SP2.
Guess the doomsayers really are right once in a while...
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Apparently the dangers of allowing applications to access the raw sockets have been addressed to Microsoft in that past.
According to Steve Gibson (Gibson Research Corporation), he had pleaded with Microsoft in the past and was completely blown off.
Read about it
I think he deserves to say, "I f***ing told you so!\n"
IMO, SP2 was a huge step in the right direction
I almost feel exactly as you do with one exception: this puts open-source alternatives further behind.
Yes - I've tried linux. I install it about once or twice a year to check up on the status. I'm eager to move beyond Windows. However, after installing SP2, I don't think that is realistic in the foreseeable future. Good job to Microsoft (as much as that pains me)!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
That this is still a "5" says something interesting about Slashdot today.. :)
Maybe once the sp2 migration is complete we should fix a pane in that broken-windows icon?
Or something like that, right?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
TeamSpeak Overlay no longer works with SP2. http://forum.qbnut.com/viewtopic.php?t=210 Planetside seems to crash a lot more too.
49%...please. Make up some more FUD, boy.
I bet the higher the number you make up, the better your chance of a +5. Oh wait, you already got that. Mission accomplished!
I made an SMS package for it and pushed it out to all of our Network Admins that have XP. Opened the needed ports using the adm in the GPO.
Install, about 30 minutes (I probably should have put in a warning before the reboot, oops) - zero problems on any of our PCs.
I had to apply two hotfixes for the SMS Advanced client (832860 and 832862). SMS works fine.
I so far haven't found anything that 'breaks' that wouldn't break due to a 'regular' firewall - so it's been fairly easy to open the right ports.
I guess I'm just lucky I don't have the certain applications (like CRM) running here, but I've tested everything I use daily and no problems so far.
I hate to play Devil's Advocate, but DUH... look at this from Microsoft's perspective. Having non-Microsoft sources distributing SP2 has two huge negative aspects for them:
1) Unthrottled Rollout
Having P2P'ers flooding the patch to "everyone-and-their-monkey's-uncle" destroys any potential throttle control that Microsoft might have had. Microsoft's initial plan was to trickle the rollout of SP2 out at only 25,000 downloads a day, exclusively via Windows Update. This is extremely practical due to the scope of the patch -- it makes a lot of sense for them to control the release in case a catastrophic show-stopper pops up, and also to allow developers some extra update time.
2) P2P Security Liability
Let's face it, Microsoft has a right to have their skivvies in a knot over people downloading any Windows patches from 3rd party sources. The infamous "Average Joe" (they guy who opens email viruses twice a week) isn't going to do an MD5 checksum comparison on a patch from a P2P net before running it -- who's to prevent someone from hacking up their own little "SP2" cocktail exe and distributing it? Ultimately the shit would hit the fan and Microsoft would take it in the face.
Even those who do check MD5 digits on a P2P-downloaded patch need a trusted source for the correct checksum... again, Microsoft doesn't want to be liable. Sure, it could be argued that Microsoft could provide the MD5 checksum themselves, but then "Average Joe XP User" would never check it anyway because "Microsoft says it's ok, so it must be safe!"
-----
"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
I had a general slowdown for the first few hours, but then theings went pretty much back to normal. Oh. And that damned Windows Messenger came back. I did notice something new (and odd).
If you open up a folder after installing SP2, there's a new command on the Help menu, "Is this copy of Windows legal?" that takes you to a MSFT website that runs you through a Q&A to determine if your copy of Windows is "legal".
OTOH, sometimes don't you need to be able to break this rule? I think my boss uses some sort of satellite connection to the internet, though I don't remember if it uses asymmetric routing or not (not really my problem -- yet.). Will this "feature" turn out to be a disaster for him?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
its fun pulling numbers out of your ass?
.... You obviously are new here.
i installed it on 3 (non trojaned pcs. I'm a poweruser after all) pcs and not a single problem.
it even seems faster than before
3 out of what? 15? 20?
Here is a number out of my ass... you only have 3 working. Oh and this is slashdot. Microsoft can't do anything write.
STFU
Dumbass.
You put out a story as big as XP SP2, and suddenly all the Windows users in /. come out of the woodworks.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
It's worth noting that I've never borked a windows box installing a service pack, all the way back to win 95.
It's been a while so I might have the numbers wrong...NT 4 SP4 was issued to fix NTFS which was horribly crippled by NT 4 SP3. I suffered through that. What did I learn from it...test ALL patches, just like they tell you in any network class. I have been using XPSP2 since pre RC1 and have liked it thus far. I put it on the internal boxes in one department yesterday and have had no complaints yet. I will continue a slow and steady roll out over the next couple of weeks. But yes the bad thing can happen but having adminned MS and Unix since 96 I have only seen it once.
Or, better yet, I thought I'd mention that mentioning that I would be modded "troll" would actually ensure that I would be modded "+5, Insightful". :)
How clever of you! :)
How about his "I told you so"?
Cringely
One of my old friends from when I used to work at MS said to me, and I quote "With SP2 DCOM apps are fucked". The whole outgoing TCP connections limitation is going to cause a lot of issues w/ distributed apps using DCOM and other such things.
This space for rent.
I installed it on my laptop.
So far, no problems, though startup is a little slower.
I'm running 3 P2P programs at the same time without issues. I also ran a MMORPG at the same time. I got a single warning about an outgoing connection, just clicked on allow, and it all worked fine.
Complaints, people complain alot, especially here, especially regarding microsoft. So take the whining with a grain or two of salt.
>^_^
Restricted traffic over raw sockets
Detailed description
A very small number of Windows applications make use of raw IP sockets, which provide an industry-standard way for applications to create TCP/IP packets with fewer integrity and security checks by the TCP/IP stack. The Windows implementation of TCP/IP still supports receiving traffic on raw IP sockets. However, the ability to send traffic over raw sockets has been restricted in two ways:
TCP data cannot be sent over raw sockets.
UDP datagrams with invalid source addresses cannot be sent over raw sockets. The IP source address for any outgoing UDP datagram must exist on a network interface or the datagram is dropped.
Why is this change important? What threats does it help mitigate?
This change limits the ability of malicious code to create distributed denial-of-service attacks and limits the ability to send spoofed packets, which are TCP/IP packets with a forged source IP address.
Many people told them this was a bad idea before they released it, but they went ahead and did it anyway. Now they have undone it. Does anyone know what Windows apps needed this soooo bad that it justified allowing script-kiddies to do DDoS's more easily?
"Microsoft can't do anything write.
.... You obviously are new here.
STFU
Dumbass."
That would be "Microsoft can't do anything RIGHT." Truth be told I bet the can spell ok.
Dumbass
...It's been there for some time.
At least all of XP has had it...I do believe it's been there for maybe 98 and or 2000?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
as compared to originating from a floppy/cd/network. This way it warns you that it may not be from a trusted source. I think I've seen this elsewhere - Win 2003 maybe?
I don't think it is so much of a tinfoil-hat thing, as one more layer of warnings against installing applications off the internet.
Most slashdotters know about the safety, or lack therof, of things on the internet. Grandmama may not.
Since the Dutch language version will be out in september 2004, I've some time to prepare for installing XP SP2.
Does anybody have (link to) a list of programs that are broken by XP SP2 ? It's better to get replacement programs now than to wait and see which programs fail at XP SP2 install.
> How is it that there are plenty of things going wrong?
From the article: "Although 43% said the SP2 installation had gone without a hitch, 49% of those contributing had problems ranging from minor to severe. A few contributors said they had to completely rebuild a system before they could get the update to work."
Let the extreme P2P kiddies relax the rules manually. On the majority of desktops (not SERVERS) out there, an inordinate amount of outbound traffic is a sign of something bad, like a backdoored spam relay or the machine has been taken over as a DDoS drone.
What is stopping the DDos software from relaxing the rules itself?
Service pack 2 Final helps the linux migration Now it may be considered as a joke, but regarding SP2 final and it`s bugs, the only thing windows fans can say in it`s defence is "it may crash alot, but IE has a really cool pop-up blocker, it might not let you install other software and trash the sistem while tryang ...but atleast the pop-up blocker works"
SP2 final will be asociated with expresions like "whoop ...it all happend so fast, guess i`ll reinstall or something..." and "it was working a minute ago...".
We will probabely write a manual "The windows dependent guy guide to linux migration"
I`m certenely migrating.
It started with the browser migration ...now M$ has a bigger problem.
Windows crashes [direct reset] when i try to install the mouse software, and when it comes back the setting are all ...spooked up, resolution, quiq launch, etc, it doesn`t let me install firefox 0.9.3 so i installed 0.9, a friend after installing it discovered he has no login screen to log on to windows, how can he work ? he had to format:)
and these are only a few ...
Siropel
I hope you are correct about improved Windows security. I agree that Gentoo (and Linux in general) gives you much more control over your computer and a greater opportunity to mess things up. Portage is not the same package manager as that used by Red Hat, for example, and you could "screw things up." If you let a five year old drive your car, he/she could also "screw things up."
Your opinions are suspect, however, and the validity of your information is uncertain. As I mentioned on a previous occasion, I wonder if you are a MS employee working to offer favorable comments about MS and unfavorable comments about FOOS. Who knows?
Now that it's behind a router, it's working fine. I don't see any reason to install something that might have a small benefit, but a large risk.
My Windows box is running fine, so I'm not gonna change anything.
Sure there is a great site will you can hear the biased other side of the story: http://www.microsoft.com/windows You'll find nothing but sunshine and good luck with it!
Ooh, can it do an impression of a real operating system? No?
:)
Well, then how about Nixon? Everyone can do an impression of Nixon
MS was aware of that problem and did put out a guide titled "Deploying Windows Firewall Settings for MS Windows XP with Service Pack 2". One option for the computers connected in a Windows domain setup is to implement a group policy to disable or modify the new firewall settings across the domain.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Could it be because nmap IS an attack tool?
A gun in the hands of a policeman generally helps our society be a safer place. The gun in the hands of a criminal generally does the opposite.
It's simple, nmap is just like a gun. One key difference - the Geek Lobby is nowhere near as organized or influential as the NRA.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
i might add I'm running firefox and mozilla 2 of those 3
Of course they can spell ok! They have clippy the spell checker!
I also find it interesting that you seem to find logging on your machine okay, even if they're hidden/inaccessible.
Might as well wait - more data should also be corrected for the undercounts, people who don't realize they have problems, or don't realize yet. If there were a 3rd party (not Microsoft) that offered remote service and insurance, we'd have more accurate numbers.
--
make install -not war
My place of work implemented a group policy that turns the firewall in SP2 off when you connect to the network. I'd really like to be able to turn it back on. Are there any ways around this????
It's a 250 MByte OS replacement, not a patch, deserves a new name like XQ or YP.
For those saying 'it works on my machine', let me say thanks for the info, maybe after I hear from a few more of you I'll considering allowing our Tech Support people to recommend it to our hundreds of thousands of retail customers...
How do I resolve these issues?
Stop the application that is responsible for the failing connection attempts.
Translation
User: My software doesn't work after I install SP2. Microsoft, please tell me how to fix this!
MS: Oh, well if you don't use that sofware any more, you'll be fine. Does that help?
User: Sweet, thanks for placing limitations on my software so that I can only use programs that you specifically let me use! I love you Microsoft!
Maybe I'm missing something here, but if this just places restrictions on outbound connections, does this mean that now if I become infected with one of these malicious programs, it will not only spread (more slowly, of course), but now it will also stop me from using some of my network software? Does this actually help?
It would be cool if there were "signatures" of malicious software that you could download from MS and insert in your Firewall settings. That way, your firewall could do packet inspection and close down the source of the evil packets instead of just shutting down/limiting the entire stack because one thing goes wrong.
Oh, and let me guess, in a few months we will hear of some new worm that goes out and makes some huge amount of outbound TCP connections (not actually doing any harm, but just a shitload of outbound TCP connections) across a LAN to halt activity for all users. If that doesn't work, perhaps the queue itself can become so large as to bring the machine down? I imagine this has been tested, but with MS, you never know...
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
The worst thing that I noticed once I switched to SP2 (also updates to IE for win2k3 cause the same issue so its an IE change that did it) is that IE will freeze up until it loads the page and often until it loads the images from that page. I've got the bug reports in so hopefully it gets fixed, annoys the heck out of me.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
I enjoyed this comment posted way down on the linked page.
--
SP2 destroyed my midget porn collection and made me so gay I moved to San Francisco.
Posted by: phil kaplan at August 12, 2004 12:07 PM
--
I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more people moving to SF now as everyone installs SP2.
LOL!
The parent post was inquiring as to how ping and tracert can still work if RAW socket sending is disabled.
I have kerio running and accessed the net fine with XP's new firewall on. You might run into the situation where your personal firewall had rules which allowed incoming connections which no longer works if you have MS's firewall on. But you should be able to access the Internet fine with SP2's Firewall and a 3rd party Firewall both running.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
You know, instead of magically pulling absolutely random numbers out your ass like "49% of installers have problems." I'd particularly like to hear about this mysterious "non-Microsoft browser incompability."
Hey, it got you modded up at any rate.
Exactly what about SP2 makes moving to Linux unrealistic? SP2 is a needed up date to an already good OS but its not some sort of revolution, and not something that I can see that would prevent someone from using Linux if indeed they really wanted to 'move beyond Windows.' Incidentally, when I wanted to try something new, I built a machine out of used parts and ran linux and windows, and I still do, so once again, what about SP2 precludes using Linux?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I bet most of that can be chalked up to simple carelessness in installation. Simple things that people should do, but may often not, is closing all applications, temporarily disabling the on-access scanning of their anti-virus software, and also temporarily turning off a 3rd-party software firewall if possible. Worst of all is the crazy people who try to install it over an SP2 beta. They should have the good sense to uninstall the beta service pack first and go back to the SP1 they had before, then install SP2.
GET THEM INSIDE THE VAULT!
SP2 has worked out fine for my office. The only problem, one that effects everybody in the office is that our mice pointers will ghost away in a random direction. Nothing serious, just annoying.
Anonymous idiot Coward, you already look like an idiot, but in another subthread. I'll dump *your* FUD by quoting the BBC again, here:
"Although 43% said the SP2 installation had gone without a hitch, 49% of those contributing had problems ranging from minor to severe."
That's how reasonable people get recognized as Insightful. Not by kneejerk attacks accusing others of their own misdeeds.
--
make install -not war
I have an eMachines M6805.
Athlon64 3000+ laptop.
I Ghosted my machine, running XP Pro w/SP1.
Slipstreamed SP2 into my XP Pro Upgrade CD.
Restored from OEM CDs.
Upgraded to XP Pro SP2, and then the problems started.
-Star Wars Galaxies locks up when I launch it.
-Only the FN+F1 and FN+F2 keys work, the rest lock up the system.
-Unplugging USB devices (other than thumbdrives when I stop them) or the power supply lock up the system.
-On shutdown or hibernate, it stops at the end, right where it should power off, and hangs.
The kicker - I emailed eMachines tech support.
I apologize but we can only support the original software that was preloaded on the system. Upgrading the Operating System is already considered as third party software so any type of support will have to come from Microsoft. There is a possibility that the hardware is causing conflicts with the new Operating System and that you may need updated drivers for the devices installed on the computer.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
He who tries to show wit on /. only makes it half way......
Here's a good impression:
I installed SP2 on three systems, and it worked flawlessly on all three. On my main system before SP2, XP would not allow me to install my SATA driver. I installed the SATA driver when I installed the OS, but once the OS was loaded, it referred to my SATA device as an "unknown device". Attempts to load the correct driver only caused the system to not boot.
I've been living with no driver officially installed for the device, which basically means that all the caching and performance increases that one would normally have (DMA, write caching, etc) for their hard drive were not activated on mine. Now with SP2, it let me install the driver and it booted fine without any problems. As a result, my computer runs twice as fast on almost every application and about 20 times faster when using virtual disk drivers (www.jetico.com) for container file encryption.
Their security center which monitors antivirus, firewalls, and automatic updates, as well as their HUGE automatic update selection box on startup are all good things too. I worked at a helpdesk for 6 months and 90% of the problems were users who had automatic updates turned off or set to install on notification (which they never selected).
Overall I've been very happy with it.
-=Lothsahn=-
I meant to add that SP2's Firewall is incoming only. From what I understand there is nothing in the software to even block any outgoing connection.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
All these people are supposed to be reporting major problems, yet the links point to sites with mostly positive reviews. Not to mention, I've been running SP2 since RC2 with not a single problem whatsoever.
:)
Slashdot and its juvenile broken window graphic just wanted a FUD article to meet the daily quota for the garish-looking IT section.
It's worth noting that I've never borked a windows box installing a service pack, all the way back to win 95. On the other hand, I've lost track of how much time I've spent cleaning up after typing "emerge -uD world". I thought I'd mention that so I can ensure I'll be modded troll. It's true, though, I swear it.
/etc files. If you make any config changes, that's a big no-no..
.. =)
Perhaps your sysadmin skills are lacking. I've never had an issue with using 'emerge --pretend -uD world' to see what will be changed, looking at the release notes for the new versions, and emerging the things I should upgrade. Not only that, but I imagine you're one of those people who like to auto-merge the
The fact that a M$ service pack (which replaces M$ only software) can blow up some systems up here and there (one of the reasons why they added system restore points to service pack installations) just gives you an idea of how hard it is to maintain the Windows operating environment. I feel sorry for the M$ developers that have to deal with dll hell and have to worry about retaining ancient compatability with old libraries..
They should allow an 'expert' SP install that lets you pick and choose what portions of the service pack you'd like to install. *shrug* I'm just a control freak
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
You really only hear on the news about the cars that crashed the people who were injured and killed. You rarely hear about the thousands or millions who managed to drive to and from work safely.
I think it's the same here. Sure there might be people who think SP2 did the best thing for their computer ever. But I imagine it's either... "it didn't break anything", or the range from "slowed me down" to "crashed everything".
Sure, I'm interested to know how many people had more problems, but I'm much more interested to hear what problems there were.
I have but it on 34 machines so far and it seems to be working fine. Only on one machine has it caused problems. Its an AMS eCube EG65 that came with our 3D FaceCam. The problem is after install, XP totally freezes during the boot process. All drivers are current and BIOS is latest (as of Monday). Even from a clean install it did that. Who do I blame? Microsoft, The Motherboard, Canada?
Since applying SP2 (and disabling the built in firewall), it seems that Zonealarm (free edition) takes longer to start up when I initially boot up the machine. It's very strange. XP seems to boot faster but then I'm waiting longer for Zonelarm to finish loading. Could it be that Zonealarm is taking the same amount of time as before but before it loaded in the background?
Microsoft has objected to people helping them distribute SP2.
Isn't this a good thing??
I have (somewhere) a newspaper whose front page talks about the lack of fatalities on highway 17 one year. Well, on the Santa Cruz county side of the hill, anyway. The worst turn on the whole hill has always been on northbound 17 before the summit, and even after they upgraded the road considerably it's still pretty bad.
Highway 17 is known for its fatalities, so this is a particularly appropriate comparison. If XPSP2 had gone off without a hitch, we would be hearing about it, trust me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I am looking forward to XP service pack 2 and Longhorn as well. Good job Microsoft! I am glad there is a Linux movement too, that keeps Microsoft on it's toes innovating really cool products because they should, because they run this home pc maket. And most corporate offices to boot!
And don't forget that people who can't send in reports after applying XP SP2 are too, to some extend, self-selecting.
my linux box wouldn't know what to do with it.
The Truth About Slashdot
Exactly. In linux that would require a root password to let the user know something like that is being altered. So far, I don't see how these measures will protect the user from malicious software they download.
Before SP2, windows was a broken door. Now it's a broken door with a "do not enter" sign.
You mean unprofesional like spelling Microsoft with a dollar sign (M$) like you did in this post?
;-)
Let ye without sin cast the first stone....you might end up breaking a window or something.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
As someone who helps corporations find flaws in their networks I had the following setup:
XP as base OS with multiple VM images for "serious work".
This worked well since XP had RAW_SOCK support and all my corp applications (read Exchange Outlook) worked fine. My images didn't mind the overhead since we had 1GB of RAM and all the packets went out without problem (think SYN scanning).
that was then, this is the new crappy future.
Now I have error 4226 ALL over my system event log and any types of scans from my images are limited to 10 connections. thanks guys.
I've been contemplating moving to a linux base OS with MS vmware images that would hold my corp applications (again read outlook/exchange) but haven't because of the time it would take to build all these things. Now it looks like I may not have a choice.. MS has essentially shut me out of it's OS. Not that I represent a large section of users but thanks all the same. Just goes to show that the MS operating systems should be considered Tinker Toy quality only. Not for serious work. If you need something that will not purposely limit your network connections out of fear then skip the MS area all together.
XP SP2 breaks nmap
Your opinions are suspect, however, and the validity of your information is uncertain. As I mentioned on a previous occasion, I wonder if you are a MS employee working to offer favorable comments about MS and unfavorable comments about FOOS. Who knows?
Not everyone who says something good about Microsoft if some kind of schill or plant. Microsoft is a big company. They do some things right, they do some things wrong. Personally, I believe that the harm they do greatly outweighs the good, but others are entitled to their own opinions without being insulted because they express them.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
First, let me say that I had an extremely stable XP Pro system that was running for weeks and months without a crash.
:)
After installing SP2 the following things have changed:
1) Minor - wireless connection icon in a tray appears regardless of the setting telling it not to.
2) The wireless wizard keeps the WPA shared password and when you re-run it, you can click "unmask" and read it in plain text. Horrible for security - anyone with 5 seconds near your keyboard will get unrestricted network access very soon if you have WPA. (Fortunately, the wizard was unable to configure my wireless network and I happily returned to the Funk client that worked flawlessly for a long time. I would feel bad using it if native support was any good)
3) And this one is the kicker - system now freezes up randomly from time to time. This has never happened before. If anyone has experienced this and has an idea as to how to fix this - let me know. I will wait a short while and then try to uninstall SP2 if problems persist (mind you, I don't have any need in the "security fixes" that they have applied - I just like feeling up to date
Typical linux user response, "you're an idiot." Blaming the user for running this command which the handbook (as in RTFM) says to do is hypocritical. Blame microsoft when some fucktard installs gator, but blame the user when portage screws things up.
I use emerge -p for doing this too, and I'm very cautious because I've read how this command can bork your system. And unless I've manually changed one of those config files myself, I don't know what they all mean or what the differences will make when etc-update changes them. I've heard dispatchconf takes care of this though. But my point is that he did what the manual said, and it borked the system.
Taken from the IEBlog:
"Basically, consider this real world analogy: we have improved the fences and doors that separate your yard from the street and your yard to your house. If someone manages to get through the barriers, s/he will find your valuables locked in a safe inside the house. We have made it harder to break in and less interesting if you do."
Very funny!
Ricardo
Something can be overall workable even with a slew of minor issues. Windows has a history of this.
A better example is my Linux (Debian and SuSE) environments. I am very happy with them even though there are plenty of bits and pieces I'd like to see improved / fixed.
I thought it was stained glass, too, or some semiprecious stones... thought it looked nice, actually, like some old jewelry.
But after reading the comment, I popped it into photoshop and blew it up... it's definitely broken glass. Probably if you were surfing at 800x600 or less, or on a mac where the screen is brighter, it'd be pretty obvious.
Isn't this a dupe of a previous article?
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
The fact that Windows XP Service Pack 2 puts limits on outbound incomplete TCP connections means the spread of viruses will be dramatically reduced, especially working in conjunction with WinXP SP2-compliant versions of commercial antivirus programs out there.
People are so used to be the "loose" security of Windows XP SP1 and earlier that when Microsoft did tighten down security with SP2, they're all complaining for all the wrong reasons.
Many, many users are reporting problems with SP2 limiting outbound TCP/IP connections. This appears to be nailing anyone who makes heavy network use of their machine, including especially users running P2P applications.
This is what is supposed to happen, the firewall is turned on now by default, and from a security standpoint this is a good thing.
Microsoft famously get criticised for slack security and when they try to do something about it they get it even worse.
I wouldn't mind so much but this is a tech website yet the poster wrote this up in a way that made the concept of a firewall as something alien.
People may well be having problems I don't know but it sounds like what is happening is that the less clueful are running an app, getting asked if they want to unblock it and don't know waht to do. Pretty soon they will learn what it all means and life will continue pretty much as normal.
Beautiful ... Only, you should follow through with the "The Images" capitalization scheme ... Right before "Instead, I found my face flushed" you dropped it to "The images". The capital "I" really spells the horror.
On my main system before SP2, XP would not allow me to install my SATA driver
So this really isn't a compatibility or security issue. This only shows that the manufacturer of your motherboard, the manufacturer of the chip which drives the SATA, or the hard drive manufacturer finally paid their tithe to Redmond.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
I second this question. I have installed SP2 and I can't say that I noticed much difference to my machine. It seems more responsive but I honestly don't see much difference at all. Certainly nothing that's a linux Killer.
Anyone else have this problem or know how to fix it?
Other than that, it seems fine. Some good new options (and by new I mean newly copied from Mozilla) in Internet Explorer.
"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey
Slipstreaming is a way of integrating the service pack into the Windows CD to get a one-stop install.
Good things:
Windows Media and DirectX 9.x installed by default (no need to patch/upgrade older versions)
Various services disabled which weren't in SP1
Security Centre not as anoying as expected.
system seems quite fast - possibly faster than SP1 slipstream
Bad things:
STILL no driver for nForce 2chipset
STILL has out of date nVidia graphics driver installed
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
FWIW,
/noexecute to /execute in boot.ini. Problem solved.
n xp pro/maintain/sp2mempr.mspx
SP2 breaks Aladdin hardlock drivers on AMD64 machines but not Athlon XP. It has to do with Hardware DEP in the AMD64 chips. I changed
http://www.ealaddin.com/hardlock/default.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/wi
How about M$ spending some money to develop an installer that does that for you?
If you're shooting for the lowest common denominator like Windows does, you need to understand that 'mom & pop' are your 'lowest' and don't have a clue how to turn a firewall or virus checker off. Do it for them to prevent problems.
Seems like something they should have figured out about a decade ago...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I'm not saying he's an idiot.. I'm saying his sysadmin skills are lacking. Any knowledgable admin will know what packages they're upgrading before actually doing it. (The same thing goes for Windows.. I don't install a service pack without knowing what changes are going to be made.) The handbook even tells you how to do that right below the update command:
Again, if you want to see what emerge wants to update, use the --pretend option together with the --update option: (Gentoo.org portage howto)
etc-update gives you an option to see the diff between the original and wanna-be merged config file. Check it out next time you need to etc-update..
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
From the article:
How do I resolve these issues?
Stop the application that is responsible for the failing connection attempts.
Me: "Mr. Goodwrench, my car makes this horrible knocking noise and it will only go 40 miles per hour. What do I do?"
Mr. Goodwrench: "Stop driving the car."
Read my keyboard review.
I have had problems already with the 10 socket limitation. Is there a way to disable this limitation, or must I revert back to SP1?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I am peeved that the elimination of tcp data over raw sockets is not unchangeable with a registry edit. I want to be able to run nmap on windows xp now, not when the port maintainers find a workaround.
ostiguy
http://www.lvllord.de/4226fix/4226fix-en.htm That link won't work directly with the slashdot referrer, but click on a few links to take you to a patcher that will patch tcpip.sys to whatever amount of connections you want (use /l= on commandline).
If this isn't a troll, well, than I'll be damned!
How the fscking hell is this +5 insightful? Windows made its OS a bit more secure, whoop-dee-doo.
We're not talking about a deal-sealing situation here folks! The amount of gain with SP2 is very marginal at best.
Please mod this crap back where it belongs.
zos
> SP2 crashed a lot of machines that were already exploited. Good. They were already broken. It worked fine on all my home machines (3), and my tablet pc, but it crashed my main work machine, which was in perfect working order before the install. After installing, windows will not boot at all. Even safe mode hangs. The last file it lists is agp440.sys. After some searching it looks like many other people are having the same problem, and they all have newer Intel processors with hyperthreading, and nobody as yet has posted any kind of solution other than reinstalling windows from scratch. At least when you get a virus you can usually still use most of your system!
"O'Connor, smash the window." "Why me, Bigboote?" "It might be boobie-trapped!" "Oh!"<smash> -Buckaroo Banzai
I have mod points right now. I could have just modded him down. I would prefer some insight as to why his posts are usually pro-Microsoft and anti-Linux. I assume my comments give him an opportunity to prove me wrong and, more importantly, to explain his position. I certainly do not think Linux is perfect and I find problems with Linux occasionally. However, as a Math Professor I find that so many good programs are available (e.g. there is a Debian package for Ken Brakke's Surface Evolver program) that I would never return to Windows. I was using xfig yesterday to prepare figures for a new paper. My coauthor in Australia has limited bandwidth; I used ps2pdf to turn the postscript file to a pdf file for her. Things (e.g. tools) are so easy under Linux that the minor bugs (e.g. really minor KDE problems) are not a big deal to me.
49% of REPORTERS!
That could in reality be 2% of the entire installed base.
Saying "49% of the people that installed it are have troubles" is the biggest piece of FUD evar.
MS has NOTHING on you guys in the lies, lies and more lies dept.
I hope to have a patch restoring functionality within a couple days, but a workaround is available now. Try adding the --win_norawsock option to your Nmap command-line. That tells Nmap to avoid raw sockets and use the workaround that Nmap uses for systems like Win98 that never supported raw sockets in the first place. Several people have confirmed that Nmap works again for them now, as long as they use that option.
While I commend Microsoft for some of the real security improvements in SP2, limiting raw sockets like this is misguided and harmful. As this workaround shows, there are still plenty of loopholes for sending packets. If that continues, worms and virii will simply use the same techniques. Alternatively, if MS continues to cripple Windows until security scanners can't function, Windows users lose as well. While they won't be able to scan their own systems and networks for vulnerabilities, attackers on superior systems will suffer from no such limitations.
MS should focus on security the system against compromise in the first place (through more timely patching, limiting services available by default, code auditing, privilege separation, etc.) rather than crippling the system for legitimate users. Linux and *BSD offer full raw sockets, and yet they haven't become the haven for viruses and worm propagation that Windows has.
-Fyodor
Concerned about your network security? Try the free Nmap Security Scanner
"auto-merge the /etc files. If you make any config changes, that's a big no-no."
I could not agree more.
You are forgetting SP6 which wreaked havoc. You had to uninstall it and run SP6a. Sometimes it's not just the service packs. The regular paches can cause issues.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
one more layer of warnings against installing applications off the internet.
Whew! Lucky for us we can trust floppies and CDs!
Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> Windows Components -> Networking Services -> Peer-to-Peer "Enable Peer-to-Peer Networking Services."
Photoshop 5.5 won't work with SP2 - at least not for me. Just sits there on the startup screen.
I've been waiting for this feature for months. "Downloaded" flag for executables.
Still... does it apply to files created by scripts/applets/whateverlets downloaded from the internet?
Anyway, I'd like more on how this info is stored. If it's kept as an index to filenames / url, then it COULD be used later to invade your privacy.
However, maybe one could turn on an option called "use 1-way encrypted indexes" for privacy. That way, who knows, cookies and other files could still work - yet it would be impossible to know where they came from. Hmmm now that's good or bad?
Just a thought.
Try OS X and move beyond Windows and Linux at the same time.
The Juniper Netscreen Neoteris IVE SSL-VPN application manager is incompatible with Windows XP SP2. The tech-doc on their support site says they maintained compatability through the beta process, but it was broken upon final release. Of course this functionality does wacky things to the TCP/IP stack, so all the network changes were likely to interfere somehow.....
Many of these functions are new for SP2, for example the InetFWAuthorizedApplications interrface has a method to add a new application as "Authorized." Similar APIs allow the opening of ports, etc. (And most of these say Client: Requires Windows XP SP2. which indicates they were newly added.
Here's my question: What's to prevent programs from simply adding themselves as authorized and opening the ports they need? After all, if the Firewall control panel applet can do it, can't any other program? And since many, many XP users run all the time in the "Adminstrator" group, can this somehow be blocked?
Is it time for Microsoft to make a new "Super Administrator" level and start putting certain critical things (like changing the firewall) as needing that security level?
Now I need to write a program to see if my XP box won't indicate if I authorized myself and open up a port....
Best Buy can have you arrested
go back to ars technica
Microsoft has the wrong end of the stick here. Rather than trying to reduce the number of ways that PCs can become infected, they're trying to reduce the damage that malicious software can cause. They've done this before, and tripped up... they modified Outlook so that programs couldn't as easily get to the Outlook address book... and what happened? Well, what happens when you want to sync your PDA?
Before they spend ONE MORE DAY on this kind of kludge to limit the utility of the OS, they need to deal with the FIRST stage of the infection. They need to remove the dangerous coupling between programs through the Microsoft HTML control, so that you don't have every program that registers a handler... even for *local* file access... suddenly becoming a potential attack point.
The problem is - Windows doesn't need to be a Linux killer, it just needs to be "good enough" to keep people from looking for a new solution. I look forward to Linux having a much greated share of the desktop market, and I'm sure that one day it will. It just feels better to run. But in the mean time, if people have fewer compelling reasons to switch, they're not going to switch just for the hell of it. Linux needs to be a Windows killer.
Microsoft has objected to people helping them distribute SP2
Why on earth don't they post their own tracker and BT client? It'll be just as small (if not smaller) than their custom installer, yet take advantage of everyone elses bandwidth. Post some md5 checksums if people are worried about integrity of the downloaded file.
The only people who won't be pleased about this would be Akamai.
As another poster mentioned, MS themselves confirm this support being removed. I've been chuckling about this all week, because I've been waiting for this day for 3+ years now. Steve Gibson may be a blowhard, but he was 100% dead-on correct on this one.
:)
As to why ping and tracert still work - well, they work for the same reason they worked in Windows pre-2000. Check out that link, it has nice pretty pictures, but here's the dirt (and everyone can correct me on the technical details I get wrong):
Raw sockets allow you to write data directly to the network layer. You can bypass the TCP and IP layers this way, and put whatever the heck you want into your packets. This gives you the ability to do fun things like forge your source address (good for UDP flooding or TCP SYN floods), and pretty much send anything you want. A lot of older attacks used to send malformed packets (bad TCP or IP headers) which would cause the receiving machine to choke on them (see: WinNuke).
Now, if you're forced to go through the appropriate layers (TCP and/or IP), the protocol stack handles the headers for you. Things like your source IP address, for instance, are assigned for you. You cannot change this, and therefore cannot spoof this. In the Win9x (and NT4) days, Windows only allowed you to write to the TCP layer. To accomodate "raw" sockets for use in ICMP, you could write to the IP layer (because ICMP doesn't use the concept of ports or sequencing or any of the TCP goodness).
In 2000 and XP, Microsoft inexplicably allowed FULL raw socket access, something which had only been seen in the Unix world before - hence why most DoS attacks came from *nix boxes. This is one reason shell accounts used to be a BIG DEAL for script kiddies to get (the other reason of course is that anyone can install Linux or a BSD these days). Folks like Gibson warned them that Windows would now become zombie heaven, and hey! they were right.
Microsoft has finally admitted to the mistake, realized that almost nothing other than attack tools use full raw sockets, and has closed this up. I suspect they're allowing only IP layer access again (for TCP), and transport layer access (one above this) for UDP, to prevent IP spoofing. Notice that this still allows you to spoof your source IP address on a TCP connection - this is why outbound un-ACK'd TCP connections are being limited. We don't want SYN flooding
ICMP works because you still have IP layer access. It's sort of like a pseudo-raw socket. This makes me wonder: has anyone seen any limitation on ICMP traffic? Because a ping flood with spoofed source IP addresses should still be possible from what I can tell.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
There is no (known, atm) way to do so, without patching tcpip.sys. There is a site which gives instructions on how to do so here http://www.lvllord.de/ - an automated tool to patch, and the offsets and values for those who prefer to do it themselves.
-- CyberTech
When apple puts out a security update, they send a PGP-signed email to their mailing list, security-announce@lists.apple.com. The mail has download URLs, and SHA-digests for each. e.g., here's an excerpt from the last email I got from them:
a ds/
For Mac OS X v10.3.4 "Panther" and Mac OS X Server v10.3.4
===
http://www.apple.com/support/downlo
Click on: Security Update 2004-06-07 (10.3.4)
The download file is named: "SecUpd2004-06-07Pan.dmg"
Its SHA-1 digest is: 182745485d8db3ea29ec67cb603cc5668a4f60d9
MS should have done something similar. They already have an existing mechanism (a mailing list for security-related announcments), they just need to add the PGP-signing and checksum. (MD5 or other)
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
It's been a while so I might have the numbers wrong...NT 4 SP4 was issued to fix NTFS which was horribly crippled by NT 4 SP3.
Yep, some of the NT service packs were horrid.
Personally, I'm holding off for a few weeks to see if XP SP2A shows up. I'm in no rush to break systems, and I have other things on my plate to play beta-test monkey this week.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Well, we've only tried installing the upgrade on 3 machines at work: 2 failed to boot afterward; the third is ok though, we suspect it's something to do with Office, but being Windows you're never sure what the hell's going on under the hood!
It's also failed to fix the performance "bug" with MySQL via ODBC. I'm sure others saw this after SP1 - reports from Access using MySQL suddenly became 40-50 times slower. One of my rolls is to rewrite slow Access reports using perl on the server, and I've always managed to decrease the run-time by 80-90%. Now with new XP SP2, my perl version of access reports are about 99% faster!!! Well done MS!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
I have no use for windows firewall, being offline,
but sp2 turned my whole network into bubblegum with its rate-limiting tcpip.sys bug. A lot of expensive paperweights, here.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
How do I resolve these issues?
Stop the application that is responsible for the failing connection attempts.
You heard it from the horses mouth, M$ says the cure is not to use windows.
How preciously naieve of you!
We've gotten to the point where you need to post AC if you want to say something nice about Microsoft.
My SP2 RC2 downloaded the official SP2 through its automatic updates and then installed it with absolutely no problem whatsoever. Dunno what these people are running.
This seems to me like "automate it because lusers don't know better" dogma. While that does apply in situations such as applying periodical security patches or updating anti-virus software, which should be automated, it can't be applied in this case.
Find me 3rd party firewall or anti-virus software that can be turned off by an installer program, and I'll bet you it could be turned off just as easily by a virus. It would defeat the purpose of having such software. Many applications will bring up a "do you want to save changes" when there's a modified document open. Would it be better for the installer to force the app to close and lose unsaved changes? I think not.
I would agree that the installer should include an on-screen warning to close all programs, turn of AV and firewalls, and not to install over a beta version. Such a warning would probably get a lot more people to do it right, and if they didn't know how to do some of those things, to hold off installing until they figure out how. Doing it for them, however, wouldn't work, and if attempted, would probably create many more problems than it would prevent.
GET THEM INSIDE THE VAULT!
What a twisted point of view you have! "It's worth noting that I've never borked a windows box installing a service pack, all the way back to win 95" Yeah, you can bork it in 1000000 different ways, In linux you at least get to recover it without reinstalling the OS, and if you didn't RTFM before the emerge -uD world don't blame the OS, blame yourself, of course, you won't blame Windoze when the latest spyware takes over your browser, is not MS fault.. yeah, sure
It's been a while so I might have the numbers wrong...NT 4 SP4 was issued to fix NTFS which was horribly crippled by NT 4 SP3. I suffered through that.
Um, I got news for you: NT4 was released around 1996. The service pack in question was released prior to the year 2000. The product you're speaking of isn't available for sale, isn't current, and isn't even officially supported any longer. We're more than halfway through the year 2004. Isn't it time people quit judging the quality of Microsoft software by what happened almost ten years ago? Would it be fair if I judged Linux's fitness for a particular task based upon a bad experience I had with the 1.x kernel back in 1997? No, but I constantly hear Slashdotters harp about how awful Win95/NT4 was and how nice Linux kernel 2.4/2.6 is when Linux clearly has the benefit of several more years of development under its belt. If you're going to castigate Microsoft for something, castigate current products by comparing them with current alternatives. Doing anything else is comparing apples to oranges.
If such stuff came from Microsoft, it'd be called FUD, but since it comes from Linux lovers on Slashdot, it gets modded +1 Insightful. What a way to be fair and unbiased, huh?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I installed it on two machines this week. Installed smoothly, and no adverse affects so far. Seems slick.
$sig=$1 if($brain =~
I can't wait to see what happens once SP2 is pushed to all of the malware infested PC's out there in userland. When the new firewall starts throwing hundreds of warnings per minute about attempted outbound connections while Jane Luddite is trying to email her grandson these users are going to freak right out.
On the other hand, I guess that most of the malware infested computers are the ones that DON'T automatically run Windows Update and thus won't get the service pack. Either way, I can't wait to see what happens. I'm covered at work because we have SUS setup to skip SP2 until we can finish our testing.
As for all the home users, I feel another Y2K coming on. Maybe this one won't be such a letdown!
"The fact that a M$ service pack (which replaces M$ only software) can blow up some systems up here and there..."
...and finally, NivenHuH gets this week's "Paul McCartney Memorial Throw-In-An-Extra-Preposition-And-Call-It-Artistic " award. Take it away, Paul: "In this ever-changing world in which we live in..." (Live And Let Die)
(Please note: all in fun, I'm really not a grammar Nazi!)
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Install will fail 100% of the time with prescott.
I actually TRIED installing Linux but after a few hours of wrestling with it to get it to work I gave up and installed XP. It had a nice GUI that walked me through it (yes, it IS important) and it all went fine and I didn't have to worry about anything not working. The first time I booted up, sound worked, it recognized my internet connection, and all my programs installed perfectly. They really need to work on the usability part of Linux if they want it to take off. Keep the end user far, FAR, FAR away from any of that command line nonsense, you're trying to convert Windows users, when was the last time they had to use a command line? How many of them even KNOW WHAT ONE IS!?
I do use Knoppix on my laptop though, now THAT'S a distro that got it right.
From your post:
The numbers came directly from the article, no pulling out of Donkeys necessary.The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Try OS X and move beyond Windows and Linux at the same time.
Yeah from an OS monopoly to a hardware one too! yay!
Then you had SP4a, which fixed a few critical errors with SP4. Like breaking Intel's EtherExpress-cards (of which there were *many* users).
Heh, that'll go over well, Microsoft writing software that disables other manufacturers software - even temporarily - just to get their stuff installed.
Nope. Didn't read the article? Its not even about blocking or unblocking a port at your firewall.
Its about two things, raw sockets go bye-bye, and TCP/IP stack based limits to simultaneous outbound connections:
"The Windows implementation of TCP/IP still supports receiving traffic on raw IP sockets. However, the ability to send traffic over raw sockets has been restricted in two ways:
*TCP data cannot be sent over raw sockets.
*UDP datagrams with invalid source addresses cannot be sent over raw sockets. The IP source address for any outgoing UDP datagram must exist on a network interface or the datagram is dropped."
Also, "The TCP/IP stack now limits the number of simultaneous incomplete outbound TCP connection attempts."
Please note that this last is *not* the firewall, but the TCP/IP stack.
I haven't had a problem either. However a guy I work with can't do it. He has a P4P800 based motherboard and he is getting a BSOD with AGP400.sys file everytime he boots. He even rebuilt from scratch and was still getting it. Sounds like others are having this as well.
Ha, ha, obnoxious Microsoft apologist. When *your* software starts failing under your spiffy new Microsoft patch, come back and tell us all about it, OK?
--
make install -not war
What does that have to do with the firewall? AFAIK, a firewall isn't supposed to limit the number of connections, just allow/disallow them at all on a per-application basis.
I can understand the point of limiting outbound connections -- I just hope it can be turned off, and that turning it off is not deliberately made hard (burying it in the system registry, anyone?).
Score: i, Imaginary
Contrast the following two comments from your response:
Perhaps your sysadmin skills are lacking. I've never had an issue with using 'emerge --pretend -uD world' to see what will be changed,
and
The fact that a M$ service pack (which replaces M$ only software) can blow up some systems up here and there (one of the reasons why they added system restore points to service pack installations) just gives you an idea of how hard it is to maintain the Windows operating environment.
So, if someone messes up a Linux "service pack" application, they're an idiot and Linux shares no blame, but if they muck up a Windows box, Microsoft is totally to blame. Yup, that makes all the sense in the world...if you're a Linux zealot.
I feel sorry for the M$ developers that have to deal with dll hell and have to worry about retaining ancient compatability with old libraries..
I'll remember that next time I can't get an RPM to install due to dependency hell. That's just so much more fun than DLL hell, isn't it? Sure, I can mitigate that with apt-get and Synaptic package manager, but likewise Windows DLL hell hasn't existed in a long, long time due to built-in Windows DLL version control. Again, you're judging current Microsoft products based upon what they were producing almost ten years ago. Clearly have no idea whatsoever about how much improved Microsoft's current product line is. Perhaps you should research the things you're criticizing before you criticize them.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Sure there is get the evil app to run and then have it check for existing window asking if said application is allowed to access the network and say yes. If the user blinks he'll never know.
packetfour has an article about this as well: http://packetfour.com/?id=26_0_1_0_M
Umm...ever heard of registry key permissions? These keep malware from altering system-critical stuff. SP2 includes tweaks in that direction as well, in addition to the permission restrictions already applied to non-admin WinXP users. You need Power User or Administrator rights to modify the registry in almost all cases. Those keys that any old user can modify are not critical to the system.
Look, the situation here is no different than Linux. If you're running as root and something decides to fsck with your config files, you're just as screwed as if you were running with admin rights on a Windows box and something fscked with your registry. If Windows is a broken door in this respect, so is Linux -- in the hands of a stupid user, that is.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Microsoft has objected to people helping them distribute SP2.
That's why the eDonkey2000 network is great. If they decided to distribute it there, it would be impossible to shut down, because you only need to know the size and the MD5 checksum to download it.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
About 3 years ago, Bob Cringely wrote in his PBS.org column about Microsoft purposely putting Windows in peril by making a number of changes to the TCP/IP stack. The goal? According to Cringely, Microsoft wants to offer it's own 'secure' version of TCP/IP.
An excerpt:
Now to the other approach, the one some people attribute to Microsoft. I am not making this up. The story came to me from people I have come to trust, and I have looked into it closely enough to think it might have some validity. But for the sake of keeping lawyers off my back, let's just call it a rumor, and only use it as a basis for discussion. To be perfectly clear, I am not claiming that the following is true--just that I have heard it from more than one source,and think it accurately characterizes some past behaviors of Microsoft. Perhaps by bringing it into the light, we can insure that Redmond takes a more thoughtful course. I certainly hope it is wrong.
Programmers who ought to be familiar with Microsoft's plans have suggested that the real motive for raw socket support is for Microsoft to use Windows XP to exploit a bad situation, to deliberately make things worse.
According to these programmers, Microsoft wants to replace TCP/IP with a proprietary protocol--a protocol owned by Microsoft--that it will tout as being more secure. Actually, the new protocol would likely be TCP/IP with some of the reserved fields used as pointers to proprietary extensions, quite similar to Vines IP, if you remember that product from Banyan Systems. I'll call it TCP/MS.
How do you push for the acceptance of a new protocol? First, make the old one unworkable by placing millions of exploitable TCP/IP stacks out on the Net, ready-to-use by any teenage sociopath. When the Net slows or crashes, the blame would not be assigned to Microsoft. Then ship the new protocol with every new copy of Windows, and install it with every Windows Update over the Internet. Zero to 100 million copies could happen in less than a year, and that year could be prior to the new protocol even being announced. It could be shipping right now.
Suppose you are a typical firm that also has some non-Microsoft servers. You will want to use this new protocol between your Microsoft and non-Microsoft servers. Microsoft could charge Sun millions to put TCP/MS on their systems. Microsoft can promise open support, but make it financially impractical. Then use it in a marketing attack against competitors. Zero-Footprint network drivers, ODBC, and MAPI are examples of Microsoft "open" standards that took years for non-Microsoft firms to use. Almost anyone who would have wanted to use these open standards has been driven out of business.
The full article can be found here.
I leave you to discuss this amongst yourselves.
d a v e
"Hmmm...upgrades."
it ate my baby and then ran over my dog. i hate windows...going back to my PET now...
Agreed, but, how can you relax the rules? Is there a registry key somewhere? This really sucks if there's not. Will nMap still work?
Heh. I recall under NT3.51 that when you installed a service pack on an SMP machine, you had to go move the MP version of the NT kernel into place before rebooting, or else you'd get a blue screen when the system tried to start up. The service pack installer didn't have the brains to autodetect SMP systems.
I'd hardly call having to go to a control panel and explicitly opening an (incoming) port "nailing" anyone. It's the right thing to do.
Its not the firewall, its the TCP/IP stack. So actually, yeah, *everybody* gets nailed.
...not at all, it's not like everybody has more than one working machine in case one of them is screwed(and I can hardly see them going to the nearest cafe for the report; most likely they'll have their system restored, curse loudly, but it'll be too late for them to want to do anything). Judging by previous articles, that can be quite a few...
Are you sure it's not changeable w/ a registry edit? Maybe it is but Microsoft is hiding it from us? I wouldn't put it past them.
Psst. File Traders. Yes, you. Get some old Pentium machines (you can get these for free, since people can't run new games on them and are throwing them away - Pentium2 300 works fine), take memory from several of these, and concentrate it all on one machine so it has some 128MB of it. Then install a silent power source and a big, silent hard disk, install Debian GNU/Linux, VNC, xterm, all the fonts and sshd.
Now you have a silent server machine, which can run several P2P clients at once (Gtk-Gnutella (for Gnutella) and Lopster (for OpenNap) in the VNC, Mldonkey (for eDonkey) from console (use nohup) with the Web Interface, and BitTorrent (btlaunchmany.py) in a "screen" session), Leafnode for newsgroups caching (so you don't need to keep on checking your news server daily), and if you install Samba you can mount your download dirs as network shares from Windows.
There's even a program which automatically downloads pictures from Usenet News and shows them in a web gallery (automatically parsing the original messages to add initial keywords, of course) but that's still in early alpha and not publicly available (it can't handle multipart binaries yet, and yenc decoding in pure Python is pretty slow - but it's getting there).
Just remember to firewall the machine from the Internet to keep out uninvited guests, and only open those ports that you actually need.
And you never need to worry about connection limits again ;).
The only thing it can't really run is Freenet - that darn bunny eats memory more than Ryo-Ohki eats carrots :(.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Been there, read that. Documentation doesn't make it any less a PIA. We're gonna disable the thing for now and prevent the download till the dust clears.
This space for rent.
Yes, I like to run software from poorly designed and non-informational webpages that could potentially hose my system. Sign me up!
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
Ive installed sp2 and this is what ive seen:
1. Pop ups are nonexistant.
2. MS CRM doesnt work unless patched.
3. Emule is dead. Even after opening ports on the PC, it still will not begin any downloading.
4. Yahoo messenger is very buggy post SP2. I get discoed about once every 5 minutes.
5. AIM runs ok
6. ICQ runs ok
7. Of course MSN Msngr is fine.
8. Doom 3 took a 10% performance hit for some odd reason.
9. Audigy2 works fine.
10. Winamp and the other audio players are all good.
11. Player ping is a touch higher via LAN matches on doom3, UT2004, and Painkiller. I am not sure why, but 5 PC's on a p4 server that had been getting 10-15 ping are now at 60-90.
12. Works fine for office setting where high network traffic isnt an issue.
13. Sucks for p2p/filesharing/mirc/newsgroup users.
Maybe because he prefers Windows? You could just as easily ask why so many on here have Pro-Linux and Anti-Microsoft posts?
Saying someone's ideas are suspect (they are hiding something) because their ideas do not agree with yours is the whole problem with us humans as a group...
We don't converse or exchange ideas, we just spout our rhetoric until one side or the other gives up...
I'll take that bet... But then I actually read the comments at the SANS site before submitting this story. :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The problem is, Linux doesn't need to be a Windows killer. It just needs to do what it does for the people who write it.
Rich
That's funny, I was using the same tools on Windows XP just the other day.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Just out of curiosity, how do I adjust the limit on the outbound connections ? Microsoft doesn't say.
>|<*:=
Does anyone have an idea of what still works ? Cygwin ? Opera ? Mozilla ? SharpReader ? ReGet ? WinAmp ? mplayerc ? vlc ? What ?
>|<*:=
I know, I read them too. Those are mostly technical folks who know what they're talking about. I also read the ones on Microsoft Blog, though. Here's a good example:
I think this just proves that idiots and beta software don't mix. =)
GET THEM INSIDE THE VAULT!
So, if someone messes up a Linux "service pack" application, they're an idiot and Linux shares no blame, but if they muck up a Windows box, Microsoft is totally to blame. Yup, that makes all the sense in the world...if you're a Linux zealot.
Way to quote me out of context.. The parent was complaining about 'emerge -uD world' killing his system. I said he was a lousy sys admin for not checking what he was installing; a precautious (good) sys admin will only upgrade what is needed reguardless of what platform you're administrating.
Microsoft should be blamed for faulty service pack installations as they don't allow you to pick and choose (as far as I know) which portions of the service pack you'd like to use. (If they do, then.. I'll bite my tongue and retract that statement.) If I don't want to cap my incomplete TCP sessions (for whatever reason), then I won't install that particular update.
If you're worried about RPM dependency hell, go download rpmfind (or use the two other solutions you suggested in your post). My statements are based off of the general bloaty-ness of the OS. Do we really need progman.exe, mplay32.exe, grpconv.exe, etc.. in the latest releases of Windows XP? Do we really need Windows 95 compatability 9 years later? Like I said, if I were a OS developer at Microsoft, I'd be pissed off that I have to keep all of that stuff from 10+ years ago in my final product. Hopefully Longhorn will have most of that stuff trimmed down...
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
I was wondering if anyone who runs a firewall (e.g. ZoneAlarm, among others) already would care to comment on their experience with upgrading to SP2. All of my machines (the Windows boxen, anyway) run ZoneAlarm and Norton AntiVirus (home edition on my parent's home machines, Corporate on my laptop since my university provides it for free :). I'm just curious if anyone can testify as to how this software cooperates with SP2.
Obviously, I'd prefer to use ZoneAlarm unless it and SP2 totally butt heads -- ZA has both out- and in-bound protection, and has demonstrably withstood minor script kiddie attacks and can theoretically handle much more (once a friend, just for fun, had Nessus run at maximum strength against my machine with ZA -- all ports were blocked, but by the way one service [RPC, I think] was denied Nessus was able to determine the system as Windows. This out of ~1200 scans and probes.) The only benefit I see to the XP firewall would be that it's loaded right after boot, so it starts protecting earlier.
Comments, anyone?
"You could just as easily ask why so many on here have Pro-Linux and Anti-Microsoft posts?" /. readers.)
I believe (perhaps incorrectly) that people understand that Linux is technically superior (e.g. better security, more stable). This is not to say that Linux has the same features as Windows or that Linux is better in every respect than Windows but that, overall, it is superior. Since "life" consists of special cases, this does not make Linux superior for any particular individual. A reasonable answer to your question is that people have less desire to criticize the superior product. (Of course, another might be to say that it recognizes a bias against MS held by many
"Maybe because he prefers Windows?"
I have no doubt that he (or she?) prefers Windows. Why is this? Perhaps s/he works for Microsoft? Perhaps Windows just works better for him/her?
"We don't converse or exchange ideas, we just spout our rhetoric until one side or the other gives up..."
This is an easy way to dismiss a serious issue. Is the only reason people prefer Windows that they have to use it and have just accepted it? Are there good points to Windows worth the security concerns and other issues (e.g. new features must wait for MS while any of us can start a Linux project to create the tool we want)? This is an opportunity for education and you settle for a trite phrase. Impressive (Quake3 voice).
P.S. Windows firewall is totally disabled
They should allow an 'expert' SP install that lets you pick and choose what portions of the service pack you'd like to install. *shrug* I'm just a control freak .. =)
... it's human nature to bitch and gripe. And these guys ... oh so deserve what is being sent their way especially when they start to ignore previous user settings like re-installing outlook express and messenger. Most problems I have seen security wise are ones they created in the first place .... UNPP, remote assistant, tightly integrating IE into the OS, DCOM etc. Many thing I have installed are to protect myself against microsoft's "friendly computing" motto
exactly my thoughts
but then again I can't install this SP at all. It refuses to back up a few drivers, "can not save..." maybe good luck for me?
As for those getting upset that yet again microsoft is being pounced on, they're the big fish in the pond, they're an easy target. i'm sure if the roles were reversed and Linux was the big dog - we would be complaining about that
I was in CompUSA a few days ago and saw a (software) product one could buy which would convert postscript files (and possibly other file formats) to pdf files. I am not surprised that GPLed software is appearing on Windows machines; this is good. I presume xfig and ps2pdf on Windows are free and open source. (A question: Who owns the "name" xfig? Could MS create a nonFOSS Windows program named xfig which performs like xfig?) Your comment "I was using the same tools on Windows XP just the other day" makes me wonder why companies are selling products like the one I saw at CompUSA if the same functionality is available for free already? Usually products which do not sell do not last very long; I suspect people are buying this conversion program. Why?
"This is what is supposed to happen, the firewall is turned on now by default, and from a security standpoint this is a good thing."
It looks to me like the 10 socket limit applies even when the firewall is turned off.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
While it may be true that idiots and beta software don't mix, Microsoft has actively adjusted the meaning of the term "beta" well beyond a last round of testing before release. Sending beta software out the door, even charging for it, is now their standard MO.
Now, that's a business decision, and if their customers are prepared to accept it, fair enough. However, if you're going to treat betas as real products like that, you have to support them as such as well. For a start, that means not sending something out via auto-update that isn't compatible with a beta but tries to install itself anyway and screws a system up as a result.
What's happening at present is that MS is just releasing everything as a beta, which is a cheap excuse for shipping sub-standard, unsupported software and then passing the buck if anything goes wrong. You can't do that and then not expect to take a PR hit when, inevitably, something does.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I know alot of the features that are enabled by default, are annoying. Here's how to turn them off.
i ty Center/
(simple way first... Hold power button in for 10 Seconds, machine Powers down, no more annoying features.)
Seriously though, Here's they Registry Keys to Turn off.
Hkey_Local_Machine/Software/Microsoft/Secur
You will find initially Several Keys Here, change the Dword Value of the Keys to 1 instead of 0.
This worked for me.
I hate that aggrevating crap. Somehow I think it will end up turning itself back on. You never know with MS, they pull that sneaky shit on ya, when you least expect it.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
Thanks for a great tool.
"If such stuff came from Microsoft, it'd be called FUD,"
If this stuff came from Microsoft, it would be advertised throughout the US, Europe, etc. and it would be FUD.
"since it comes from Linux lovers on Slashdot, it gets modded +1 Insightful."
People who read Slashdot quickly learn to filter the comments in one way or another. The comments might not always be unbiased but are not FUD.
Dude, you are high. Windows XP comes with 2 free support incidents and unlimited free installation support.
I don't get this - I have three machines (one of them has the original XP installed on it the day it came out - and its never been formatted) and all three of them installed XP SP2 just fine - that a 100% sucess rate.
Plus if you don't like its firewall - turn it off. Simple as that.
Why can't we talk about redhat or debian upgrades that have hosed machines past the point of salvagability? It does happen!
I feel like making some stupid, snide remark like, "Wha firewall?"... but I will not. Instead, let me tell you about Gunbound and SP2.
I installed SP2, checked the nifty new firewall features out, and then launched Gunbound. I immediately get a dialog asking me if I want to let Gunbound access the internet... Gunbound finished updating iteself before I could even click 'Yes'.
It would seem as though the firewall does not work as it should. Why bother having it on by default if it will let apps connect outbound by default? I don' see security being taken seriously by Microsoft with this kind of behaviour from their software. I might add, I have noticed that my computer seems a bit slower now too.
strike
No problems or performance hits here. Disabled the built-in firewall and virus scan since I maintain my own.
Age of Microsoft: 29 years
7 years as a percentage of Microsoft's age: 24%
Age of Linux: 13 years
7 years as a percentage of Linux's age: 54%
Ewige Blumenkraft.
I think you totally missed the point of that post.
Here we got all kinds of issues with this stuff. SP2 breaks alot of our apps and the local users machines have all kinds of missing DLL errors. We decided to hold off on sp2 deployment until we can review this patch and possibly make our own custom SP2. Just like M$, releasing code before it's ready.
TerminalEcho
Isn't the way the proto handles issues like this defined in the RFC? If so, is M$ releasing a non-standards IP stack?
You're never going to understand the value of Windows by booting up a computer and playing with it. That is what most of the Linux vs. Windows arguments boil down to, but that is useless argument made by geek who's been locked up in the server room for too long. People need to realize that computers are a tool for communication. That's primarily what they are used for in a fundamental sense and that's what drives the economics behind them. It has nothing to do with whether program A is spiffier than program B. Just look at the number of AOL users and that will give you an indication of how many people give a shit.
Great stuff, by far the best off-topic post (I hesitate to call it a troll..) I've read on /.
Do you really want MS automatically turning off your firewall and anti-virus programs to install an update? Especially with automatic update turned on? Please think before you type.
We're more than halfway through the year 2004. Isn't it time people quit judging the quality of Microsoft software by what happened almost ten years ago?
Don't peruse the post...read for comprehension. The person posted that they were holding off on applying the service pack because it might break stuff and I said I had been doing this for ten years and could only produce one example and all I took from it was that you should test first. I did not say "don't apply the service pack" read the post you will also notice I have been running XPSP2 since its' beta. Don't call me Linux lover either I use the tools for which I am paid Linux is only one.
Thank you, I believe you are correct.
Has anyone considered how the large number of popups from things like the firewall and other new security reminders is going to effect the apathy that most people feel about reading things that pop up and not just clicking OK on everything?
I hope you don't read code like you read slashdot posts! "I", "It" -- What's the difference (besides the meaning of the whole sentence)?
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Nice troll. You only pay for major releases of OS X; minor point releases are free updates. Apple's still providing security updates for older versions of OS X (e.g., Jaguar) even though their focus is on the current release (i.e., Panther) and the next major release (Tiger).
This is the way it's been, and the way it will be for the foreseeable future. Of course, I'm sure you're one of those people who whined about Apple charging money to go from OS X 10.0 to OS X 10.1, but they gave a discount to early adopters, and even made the update CD freely available for a limited time in various stores such as CompUSA.
To use your parlance, and to bring this back to the discussion at hand, SP2 is not an "upgrade" the way you mean "upgrade" in the context of other OSes (such as MacOS X). Rather, SP2 is more analogous to a point release. An "upgrade" would be moving from, say, Windows 2000 to Windows XP. (Similarly, moving from MacOS X 10.2 "Jaguar" to 10.3 "Panther" is an upgrade.) SP2 for Windows XP is thus more analogous to, say, moving from MacOS 10.3.4 to the newly released 10.3.5. Which was free, and didn't break nearly as many apps as SP2 apparently did for some XP users.
Except in Windows you run BY DEFAULT as a power user. I don't think I've ever personally seen a home user NOT run as Admin in a Windows environment.
Never confuse volume with power.
Soooo, the next worm/virus just installs its own IP stack..
Restriction problem 'solved'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Although rather strange and offtopic material you seem to be able to write and perhaps write something ontopic here(equally as detailed) and fiction/lifestories elsewhere ;)
- XP SP2 will not send TCP packets over raw sockets.
- XP SP2 will not send UDP packets unless their source address matches one of your network interfaces.
Microsoft did not say raw socket sending was disabled. As a matter of fact, they implied it's still allowed with this line: "the ability to send traffic over raw sockets has been restricted in two ways" [emphasis mine]. Not "disabled", but "restricted". They just said that now they won't allow you to send certain flavors of packets over a raw socket.As others have already pointed out, ping and tracert use ICMP, which are not on the "bad list." Both are stateless, and require nothing more than a reply from a host, so they don't require those hosts to allocate lots of expensive resources (a la SYN flooding.)
The only (semi-)legitimate use of raw TCP packets is for specialized networking tools, such as nmap. Apparently, Microsoft has ceded that business to the Unix world. Either that, or perhaps they'll offer a "Network Admin SDK" containing replacement drivers that will restore the ability to send raw TCP packets. At least they won't be present on the average home user's machine, which will be enough to deter the zombies.
John
>> What is stopping the DDos software from
>> relaxing the rules itself?
The firewall (ICF) settings require a privileged account to change them.
The "Windows Security Center" installed with SP2 hasn't rendered the need MBSA analysis on the desktop obsolete. There are several features of MBSA for desktops that the "Windows Security Center" doesn't address. The MSBA 1.2 FAQ lists them all.
According to the "Manage Your Computer's Security Settings in One Place: Introduction" page on the SP2 site, the "Windows Security Center"... The MS Knowledgebase Article #883792 "Frequently asked questions about Windows Security Center" lists the same functions. Wouldn't it have been more useful to have issued the analyzer with the service pack, thus helping desktop home users ensure the correct configuration of the new security features they may inadvertently disable in attempting to resolve program network access issues arising from the installation of SP2?
I also wonder why MBSA 1.2.1 wasn't integrated in the "Windows Security Center". It seems an like obvious component to include in any "Security Center".
Incidently, you can get rid of that stupid popup reminder to "update now, and save big $$!!" if you want.
Hit "F8", when you boot, before the Windows XP loading screen shows up. This will give you the boot menu. Select "Safe mode with Command Prompt".
Delete the offending file, "C:\WINDOWS\system32\wscntfy.exe".
Also, be sure to delete it's BACKUP, "C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386\wscntfy.exe".
No popup. No warnings that there's no popup. No warning that there's no warning that there's no popup. Just one less icon in the taskbar, and one less process running in the background. You can still use automatic update if you want, or do things manually.
It's quite clearly broken. You can see the jagged pieces and cracks. If it's stained glass, it's the worst stained glass ever and must have been made to conveniently look like broken glass...
Did you check the Penny Arcade cartoon he was linking to? It's about the term "M$"--hence his use of the term "M$" to link to it.
Sigh.
My experience with 3 computers has actually been a general speedup, especially for boot time.
Limiting outgoing TCP connections via the Windows Firewall is the smallest of problems relating to DCOM with XP SP2.
Security changes including new computer-wide DCOM restrictions and the blocking of anonymous DCOM connections with callbacks ( by default), means that DCOM apps that never really bothered to look at a proper security during design, will now need rework into order to operate with XP SP2. In some cases this will mean patches or new exes, and in some probably faqs to customers on how to setup permissions properly in dcomcnfg.
Unbelievable as it sounds to ./ers my 5 years of service packing Windows boxes has resulted in 0 failures. Nothing. ...and yes, I run Mandrake, Fedora and Netbsd boxes as well.
A clean chord is a happy chord...
And how much of that is valid where beta products are concerned?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yeah man, it's like sooooooo secure, so secure 3 lines of code can bring it down. --- Set objFirewall = CreateObject("HNetCfg.FwMgr") Set objPolicy = objFirewall.LocalPolicy.CurrentProfile objPolicy.FirewallEnabled = FALSE --- "secure Microsoft", what an oxymoron!
I'm not at all surprised at those that whine about the problems with SP2 but I'm refreshingly surprised at the number of positive comments! Highly unusual for this bunch. =)
That does not solve the problem. That is the number of connections, not number of incomplete connections, completely different. Please mod parent down.
I.O.U One Sig.
Problem solved except for the fact that you just disabled the NX (no execute) feature of your AMD64 chip which means code can execute from any memory page not just the ones marked execute. A better solution is to turn it off on a per process basis. I don't remember where that is done in SP2 but a search on google will probably turn up the solution. I think it uses the ImageFileExecution options reg key but don't quote me on that.
Gee, Microsoft's firewall is so secure you (and any virus) can disable it with no longer than 3 short lines of VBScript code...
Set objFirewall = CreateObject("HNetCfg.FwMgr")
Set objPolicy = objFirewall.LocalPolicy.CurrentProfile
objPolicy.FirewallEnabled = FALSE
I was curious about that too, i can't get any bitTorrents to work, or is that an unrelated problem that i'm having?
This is the direct link, but it'll expire when this weeks issue moves into the paid archives.
True story.
From the article: "Although 43% said the SP2 installation had gone without a hitch, 49% of those contributing had problems ranging from minor to severe. A few contributors said they had to completely rebuild a system before they could get the update to work."
equivilent to saying . 43% went perfectly and the other 49% had problems varying from some minor trouble to getting shot in the face. tells us nothing. Most people had semi-broken systems to begin with so "rebuilding" xp to put the service pack isn't a huge deal. they would have had to eventually anyway.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
And who's fault is that? Oh, I forget, if a Windows user is stupid, it's Microsoft's fault. If a Linux user is stupid, it's the user's fault. I'm so glad we got that cleared up.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Maybe someone else will write a TCP/IP stack for windows, but it will be hard.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Age of Microsoft: 29 years
7 years as a percentage of Microsoft's age: 24%
Age of Linux: 13 years
7 years as a percentage of Linux's age: 54%
Age of Unix: 34 years (officially)
7 years as a percentage of Unix's Age: 21%
relevance: 0
XP is not NT or 95/98 or DOS. Linux is Linux. If yrou gonna put out a pithy graph then put this one out:
Age of Linux: 13 years
7 years as a percentage of Linux's age: 54%
Age of Windows XP: 3 years
7 years as a percentage of Windows XP's age: 233%
and you'd have a much more relavant table.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Perhaps your sysadmin skills are lacking. I've never had an issue with using 'emerge --pretend -uD world' to see what will be changed, looking at the release notes for the new versions, and emerging the things I should upgrade. Not only that, but I imagine you're one of those people who like to auto-merge the /etc files. If you make any config changes, that's a big no-no..
I'm a novice linux/unix user. it takes me 2 hours to install emacs. 3 if the box lacks gcc. Most of this is due to having to read docs, tryign to compile, reading more docs and tryign again. The problem is, being a linux admin is not my job so why should I have to go through that to install a friggin text editor ( and I will not use hand crippling VI). Sys admin skills are uniform either and you know nothing about his problems. Refering the the release note only help if you have experience with them. If you don't it's like reading up on how to do brain surgery in hebrew upside down while operating on yourself.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
OK. I solved my problem. Not exactly pleasant. It turns out that my BIOS wasn't the latest, even though my computer is only 2 months old. The latest BIOS solved the problem, and I didn't even lose any data! Given that they are expecting everyone to use automatic updates, seems like they should have done more testing to avoid situations like this. If I'd waited for the automatic update to install it, I'd have come in one morning and had a dead machine with no idea as to why. Not cool.
"O'Connor, smash the window." "Why me, Bigboote?" "It might be boobie-trapped!" "Oh!"<smash> -Buckaroo Banzai
From the article: "Although 43% said the SP2 installation had gone without a hitch, 49% of those contributing had problems ranging from minor to severe. A few contributors said they had to completely rebuild a system before they could get the update to work."
I've had SP2 installed for a few days and everything's been just fine. Doesn't seem any faster or anything, but everything's still working. It makes me wonder what kinds of junk might be in someone's computer that would cause such horrible problems as needing a rebuild to get working again. Actually, there's a clue there: It is implied that, after problems with the update, a fresh install was performed, and then the update worked. If SP2 works good on a fresh install of XP (and we're talking the same machine here, that had problems on a polluted OS), then the problems were most likely caused by some crap that was on the system before, that shouldn't have been there in the first place. That probably also means that SP2 is working properly on machines that haven't been all crapped up with junk.
Which would also mean that Microsoft isn't at fault for those trashed machines. There I said it.
I defend myself from comments about my ass, with facts and citations. So my post is Flamebait, and a Troll:
Starting Score: 1 point
Moderation -2
50% Flamebait
50% Troll
Extra 'Flamebait' Modifier 0 (Edit)
Total Score: -1
but the AC post which baited my flame with a troll is unmodded.
--
make install -not war
This sounds an awful lot like "I'm right, therefore I'm right".
Microsoft has been headed by Billy G. (generally) for the last 29 years. Linux has been headed by Linus (generally) for the last 13 years. That's the relevance: within one organization you would expect to see continuity of character and action. The organizations have their own cultures that give them continuity.
Linux's culture does not exactly date back to the beginning of Unix - many people that were involved in early Unix (Ritchie, Thompson) are not involved in Linux. Many (though not all) of the people who were involved in the beginning of Microsoft are still involved.
XP was put out by the same people that put out NT, 95/98 and DOS. Remember that we weren't comparing DOS and XP patch strategies, we were comparing XP and NT 4.0 patch strategies. Are you willing to claim that Microsoft has changed completely since the days of that NT patch, and that their past actions are completely unrelated to and have no bearing upon their current actions? With Linux, that's plausible - it's had a lot more time, relatively, to develop, whereas Microsoft has had relatively less. Microsoft was already getting fixed in its ways; Linux has been more dynamic.
Are you willing to say that Linux 0.0.1 (terminal emulator/os) is as similar in design, concept, and completeness to Linux 2.6.7 (full-fledged Unix work-alike, server and possibly desktop kernel) as Windows 3.0 (GUI system running on DOS) is to Windows XP (GUI system replacing DOS)?
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Many mass-market users don't really know about the wonderful software available online. If they don't see it on the shelves of Best Buy and CompUSA, it doesn't exist in their reality.
Somewhat related example - I was working on a database extract with someone today. He was trying to count columns and ensure the fields were lining up in this ASCII extract file - in *NOTEPAD*. He called me up because he was having so much trouble - apparently Notepad breaks lines at 1024 characters, whether you've got word wrap on or not. Since this format is 1670 characters / line, he was having serious trouble trying to figure out if things were lining up.
The first thing I told him to do was download Crimson Editor, a great freeware text editor (one of many), and his job all of a sudden got an order of magnitude easier!
He's an intelligent guy, knows his stuff (moreso than your average grandmother), but just didn't realize the plethora of tools available online, for absolutely free. There's a lot of people like that.
What difference do you expect to instantly see? It's a security release. Not only does it fix existing security holes (like any patch or service pack would do), but it attacks the root causes of the security problems. I have been running it since the beta and every single time there has been a "New IE Exploit" story on slashdot, I have tried it on my xp sp2 machine and the exploit hasn't worked. Not because the specific hole had been patched, but because of broad security measures. The reason it's a "linux killer" is that security had previously been one area where people saw windows as weak, but with its secuirty on par with linux (although not with something like open bsd) and it already fairly stable (admittedly, not quite as stable as the linux kernel), there would be much less reason for anyone to bother switching.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
I have seen plenty of Linux users run everything as root. Technically, by default, all you need is root on a Linux platform. What's the difference, except for the knowledge not to do that (which does seem to be more prevalent among Linux users, but that could easily be attributed to the higher learning curve).
"This is what is supposed to happen, the firewall is turned on now by default, and from a security standpoint this is a good thing."
I don't think you understand that the problem is NOT the firewall, but the TCP/IP stack. You *can't* turn this off, and it will break anything that needs more than 10 half-open sockets, not just P2P apps.
No company can ever escape from it's past abuses of it's customers, just because microsoft are attempting to finally improve the software as a result of the threat of Linux does not make them an acceptable choice over the short, medium or long term.
We know what they are like with out effective competition. With out Linux they would still be the same abusive company with a disgusting OS and the internet would be virtually unusable, email would be a dying joke and everybody on the planet would understand what BSOD means.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I bet most of that can be chalked up to simple carelessness in installation.
Would not surprise me.
I am no MS fan, however I went ahead with installing SP2 onto my XP Home install, which had Kerio Personal Firewall running, Norton Antivirus 2003 running and Spybot S&D Resident running. I keep Ghost images and have been meaning to move back to my latest clean image, which is why I was so reckless (I wanted to preview it first).
I had to click a gazillion times to appease Kerio and S&D but it eventually finished, seemingly without any issues once it was all done.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
I installed SP2 on a tablet pc and the first thing I noticed was the pen input and handwriting recognition etc was much improved. So there were some improvements there, although most people will never them.
-- You're too stupid to be an atheist.
By hacking the DLL
Actually, it's often the application writers fault. For example, Flash MX 2004 will not run with a level lower than power user. So everybody at an interactive design firm that needs to run FMX will be doing so as an Admin or Power User - and MS has nothing to do with it.
I do not understand your comment. Either Linux has less severe security problems, greater reliability, etc. or it doesn't. Someone unbiased third party could compare Linux and XP and see which is better.
A gun in the hands of a policeman generally helps our society be a safer place. The gun in the hands of a criminal generally does the opposite.
And what about the vast majority of people that want to own a gun--those that are neither a policeman, nor a criminal?
Oops, make it two questions... Have you ever even used nmap?
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
(and yes, I know polar bears are from the artic, and penguins the antarctic)
Slashdot - the Fox News of IT
The same TCP stack which can be replaced in 3 seconds with a patched version off the net. I think it's a great idea. If you're pounding P2P, you're going to know about getting patches off the net. If you know that, you're also going to know about keeping your system non-zombified. It's a great way to ensure stupid users aren't making zombie boxes everywhere, yet let more experienced users keep the performance they want. Of course, it's microsoft, so to not be a troll, here's a little something - "boo! m$ sucks! linux rules! go tux!"
I the update directory of the unpacked download there is a file named spnpinst.exe. Its properties state "Peer-to-peer Custom Setup".
Anybody know what this is about? I notice that group policy now has entries cover p2p and clouds.
I like it. It was extremely easy to install (a few 'next' buttons and a 'finish') and is giving me no problems at all.
Although I never really experienced a problem with Windows XP before SP2 (no viruses, worms, etc...) so it isn't like it has changed anything drastically, but the few littles things I have seen are nice.
Plus the new firewall seems to be a huge improvement over the old one (features-wise; regarding the actual security level of it I am not sure). It seems to do everything Norton Internet Security does - individual settings per program, open specific ports, subnets, ip addresses etc... And a minor thing that impressed me is that they seem to be playing fair with the default settings. The first time Microsoft ActiveSync (for my Pocket PC) tried to access the internet it got stopped - however Firefox and IE had no problems so I am guessing they have pre-allowed some recognized programs (either that or it doesn't care about port 80).
Anyway it is all very easy to use, and considering that it provides the firewall and monitors the status of your virus scanner (prompting you to install or update things), I am guessing most semi or non computer literate people will experience much greater protection than before.
As to slowdown, I have actually noticed the opposite. Before installing the service pack my computer was sometimes running a little bit slowly (as seems to happen with computers the longer you go between clean installs) but after the service pack everything runs more smoothly. I don't know if that is just a coincidence or if during the process of updating and replacing a lot of files things got cleaned up or orginized better.
Does anyone have experience with Trend's firewall included with Neatsuite's Officescan 6.5? Specifically wondering how it stacks up compared to SP2. Haven't implemented Trend's firewall yet to my clients (mostly XP at this point on a 2003 domain)and am testing SP2. Thoughts or rants?
"Your list of 'impressions' is nothing but bad things people are saying."
Well, since "SP2 works perfectly as everyone expected" is neither an interesting headline or a true one, and these aren't benchmark tests but the opinion of users, then the bad things people are saying ARE impressions.
Frankly, given the MS philosophy of "release now, fix later", I would be deeply suspicious of positively glowing reports...yeah, I'm biased, but as the saying goes: "Fool me six times, shame on me, fool me seven or more, shame on you".
Download the new Sysprep: Windows XP Service Pack 2 Deployment Tools. See these instructions in the Readme.txt file, which has the usual sloppy, uncaring Microsoft writing and editing:
* You cannot run Update.exe within an I386 directory to update a Windows XP installation to Windows XP SP2. You must run Update.exe against the entire contents of a Windows CD. If the entire contents of a Windows CD is not present in your installation share, Update.exe fails to complete the installation process.
1. Download Windows XP Service Pack 2.
2. At the command prompt, go to the folder where you downloaded the XPSP2.EXE file, and then type this command:
xpsp2.exe -x
3. When prompted, type the path from which you want the service pack to be expanded. For example, type:
C:\XPSP2
4. Create a temporary directory on your system and copy the entire Windows XP product CD to this directory. For example, type:
MD C:\INTSP2 XCopy CDROM Drive Letter:\*.* C:\INTSP2
[Probably should be:]
MD C:\INTSP2
XCopy [CDROM Drive Letter]:\*.* C:\INTSP2
5. After the previous step is completed, change to the directory that contains the Windows XP SP2 files. For example, type:
CD C:\xpsp2\update
6. To update the Windows XP files to include SP2, type:
update.exe -s c:\INTSP2
This procedure results in an I386 directory updated to Windows XP SP2.
Alternatively, see How to slipstream SP2 into your XP CD.
I use emerge -p for doing this too, and I'm very cautious because I've read how this command can bork your system.
I use emerge -p to check what dependencies are being dragged in. It won't help to see if an upgrade will bork your system. If you do an emerge -u world and it borks your machine then don't try and fix it. The chances are it's borked a lot of machines and the first person to fix it will contribute it back to the maintainer who will put the patch back into portage. I've had an emerge -u world bork my machine a couple of times; I waited a couple of hours and then "emerge sync; emerge -u world" and it then worked fine.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
With a move to W2k for machines that need USB kit plugged into them, and I quite like it, and one machine - this one running XP. I keep thinking of putting W2k on this one, but so far it has escaped.
The other working machines have Linux on them, but one DOS application requires we continue with some sort of MS OS for a while longer.
We are small, but in no othr way unusual in being on those older versions.
1st I believe he was talking about uninstalling the beta or making an install that would install over the beta. I don't think he was talking about the AV or Firewall.
Because this story is about Windows.
How about Tux being eaten by a seal, as often happens in the Antarctic.
Not nearly childish enough ;)
I like Gentoo, I used it for quite a while, but people have to stop using Gentoo just because they think it will make their computer faster.
Gentoo is what I'd term an "Extreme OS" (Linux from scratch and Slackware also fit this bill) It compiles the whole system from scratch and allows you to configure everything. This is a good thing, but only if you actually understand how everything works, or are willing to make a fair number of sacrifices of your time to learn how it all works *when* (not if) things go wrong.
Gentoo is great for teaching average sysadmins to be great sysadmins, and it is good for developers in the community, but it is not the ricer system that it's often promoted as. It makes no difference if you save a few CPU cycles opening OO.o if you wasted thousands compiling it from scratch and bogging down your system for 1/2 an hour.
It also doesn't save you space like some would imagine, because even though you only install what you want you also install all the source for it. Sure you can remove the sources from the system once it is installed, but I'd venture that most people don't. My Gentoo system took 12GB of disk space when I removed it, the Debian system with the same software installed takes 3GB.
I'm not saying Gentoo is bad, Debian is good. For me and I imagine many others Gentoo is good for learning, but for stability you want something else. By stability I mean not so many huge critical changes that can potentially break the system if you aren't paying attention, and a good system of testing BEFORE release to the general populus. Gentoo is getting there, but other distros are still way ahead in this respect.
I started off where most people do with Red Hat, then Mandrake for more up to date packages, I moved to Gentoo to learn more and try to make my system more mine, but in the end I settled on Debian as being somewhere in the middle between Mandrake's simplicity and Gentoo's cusomizability.
I would never recommend that someone without a degree in CS or heavy programming experience jump straight into Gentoo. Good as it is it is just too much to deal with for even your average admin.
I certainly wouldn't recommend it for production servers in any type of business environment, but for development systems it kicks butt.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents on the issue. Back to work.
You're right. I was saying that most of the important stuff is security improvements that won't be obvious from running it for a few hours. But as a service pack, I'm sure it also contains plenty of bugfixes like the ones you describe, and fixes for some crashes and memory leaks and the like. I shouldn't have implied that it is only a security update.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Yes...see my sig.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I think both Linux and Windows have their strengths and weaknesses, but my point wasn't to get into which is better. I use each for different reasons.
My point was, every time one of these discussions comes up, just as with politics; people start spouting their beliefs without listening.
Which is better, MS or Linux? I don't think that question will ever be answered, not to everyone's satisfaction.
dcomcnfg -- ugh -- welcome to my nightmare. Been there, done that with some really crappy apps and components. Total ugliness.
This space for rent.
Anyone who's interested in a REAL solution that eliminates the changes to TCP/IP connection limits by Service Pack 2 should go to this site:
http://www.lvllord.de/index2.htm
This patch DOES work and fixes the REAL issue which is a change to the TCPIP.SYS file.
NOTE: If you ever re-install or repair your TCP/IP protocol or your network system/drivers/files, then you will need to re-run this patch since windows will replace the TCPIP.SYS file with the one on your CD.
SUGGESTION: If you want to modify your XP CD to include a patched TCPIP.SYS after you slipstream the CD with Service Pack 2, you can follow the guide below: http://unattended.msfn.org/xp/hacked_files.htm Cheers
Amen! Windows is plagued by application wanting to be "Administrator" for no good reason. That, and the absense of a convinient su command.
This can be accomplished by Microsoft offering alternative uncapped versions of the TCP/IP stack. These restrictions are good Ideas for the average user. What is wrong is the user's inability to deactivate them if he sees fit.
Which part of the word "default" do you have trouble understanding?
Never confuse volume with power.
see me i think sp2 is a good update
it did not slow down my ie downloads
I (as a web developer/web application developer) had on my laptop an slightly unusual Apache 1.3.29 install (W32, of course) so that I could faux-navigate a customers website without actually plugging in to anything (Often got "wow, how'd you do that" from them ;))
Anyway, what I had was an abnormal set of IP addresses for the sites I was working on - 127.0.0.1 being like, the main/root site, 127.0.0.2 being my own site, 127.0.0.3 - 127.0.0.10 being sites I updated/tinkered with often, 127.0.0.11-127.0.0.x being other customer sites.
After I installed XP SP2 on the laptop, (even with the firewall turned off), all those lovely IP addresses (except 127.0.0.1 and 127.0.0.1/sitename) stopped working.
:(
So far, though, thats the only problem. I s'pose I could buy a Mac... or install Linux on it. Heh.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
They should have the good sense to uninstall the beta service pack first and go back to the SP1 they had before, then install SP2.
Or follow the examples of others who have successfully installed SP 2 RTM over the top of SP 2 RC 2. That's what I did on one PC when SP 2 RTM came out. No problems, just smooth operation...
Updated a 2nd PC today. No problems, just smooth operation, including the Linksys USB Wireless network interface...
after installing sp2, It's impossible for me to upgrade any of my software due to insanely slow transfer rates through IE and Mozilla (~2kb/s) is this because of the incomplete TCP thing? I just wish I could get my drivers and such up to snuff. Its that time of the month :/