Is it Safe to Use Win XP SP2, Yet?

An anonymous reader asks: "I have to run Win XP for work. However, I have not had the urge to download and install SP2 due to all of the problems that I've heard. Are lots of people still having problems with it? I know I don't have any viruses or spyware, and no, Linux is not an option. I am a consultant and my hardware has to match the client. I have done plenty of searching, but nobody has really followed up and shown what is currently happening with SP2, just what was happening when it was released. Did M$oft release any patches for SP2 yet to fix some of the reported issues? I do use a wireless network, and heard it messes up the connections. Is that true? Thanks for any help." Update: 09/18 04:15 EDT by C : Apparently there may still be some performance issues with XP-SP2, as this later article illustrates, however it may not be so bad as the article makes it out to be. Some readers are suggesting that the performance hit is due to bounds checking in the code, so it begs the question: Would you prefer a slower app that has more security, or a faster app that suffers from typical vulnerabilities that might bite you big-time, later?

Comments

Most problems are firewall related.

[Godeke]

I have deployed XP SP2 fairly widely (50 odd machines) with no ill effects. The majority of "problems" are due to the proper functioning of the firewall, so understand what a software firewall does and how to open ports for programs.

One thing that is broken is loopback addresses other than 127.0.0.1: they don't function correctly, but I don't have any software that this affected.

As far as wireless goes, we did have one machine connected via a Linksys internal wireless card and a couple of notebooks. None of them were affected by SP2, but I was already using XPs native networking so you probably will want to test that if you are working with third part networking tools.

Problems?

[hillg3]

See if any of your applications will have issues

But to be honest, i've dealt with over 1000 PCs and not a single one have had any issues with SP2. I say go for it, it may have some problems, but it sure is better than what it was before....

If you're feeling lucky

[bobbozzo]

A survey (sorry, don't remember where, IIRC it was posted on NTBugTrack) said there's about 90% success rate, or 10% of computers have problems after installation.

Corporate respondents reported about 6% failure rate, and small bus & induhviduals were close to 12%.

Re:If you're feeling lucky

[magefile]

Um ... there's a reason for that, dummy. It's so you can't mod your (anonymous) self up to get your point unfairly heard, or mod someone else down unfairly, then get your 2 cents in.