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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?
...but it totally screwed me over because of this problem. I have an Intel Pentium 4 (Prescott Core) and a Shuttle SB61G2 that I bought about five months ago. It just so happens that this particular processor/mobo combo causes WinXP to totally hang.
And as an added bonus, when I tried to update my BIOS to fix the problem, it appeared to work, right up until I restarted and got nothing but a black screen. Thankfully it was all still under warranty, and NewEgg is replacing the Shuttle (with the latest version). All I was out was the $6 for shipping and the week without that computer. Still sucks, but it could have been worse.
You probably shouldn't click this.
I'm a consultant as well, however I run Debian linux as my main distribution, and VMWare which has Windows XP installed in it. This way I can make copies of Windows XP at different phases (no patches, full patched no SP2, full patch with SP2).
VMWare is not cheap, but it's well worth the money. What's bizarre is I still have Windows lockup and crash, but my computer is a lot more stable. In fact I've never had linux lock up and crash on me.
Clients are really impressed when they see the "computer" still working (Linux), while Windows is sitting at a blue screen of death. You can have 2 or 3 copies of Windows XP, and setup a samba server on the host as a background server to store your files. No data loss, no worrying about viruses or spyware, no concern about whether to use or not use SP2 (use 'em both).
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Anyone else having problems with accessing the network from a Java applet after installing SP2? I don't have a computer running SP2, but I run a website that depends on my applets being able to connect back to the server (normally this is allowed in the Java applet sandbox, and I've never had issues before) -- the connection just gets cut. Works fine on Mac OS X, various flavors of Linux, earlier versions of Windows including 98, 2K, XP SP1, etc.... but I've gotten a bunch of reports from SP2 users who just get errors.
I'm connecting to the hosting webserver, using plain HTTP, over port 80. Why would the firewall kill the socket?
If anyone with SP2 wants to waste 5 minutes and test for me (you know, try with firewall enabled, disabled, whatever other variables you can think of), I'd be eternally grateful. No reward much to offer unless you're a music teacher, though....
URL:
http://www.emusictheory.com
Login as a student
username: test
password: test
teacher code: 100
Click "do assignments", pick one, hit "start drill", press a button to get a wrong answer, hit "stop drill" then "report score", then "send score report".
You may see a window pop up if the drill gets the error and tries it's new recently-hacked-in backup method.
If anyone does help out, contacting me is easy through the website.
I'm a 10%'er ...
... gestures kick ass.
brand new laptop (toshiba) running xp home. only been running about a week. installed sp2, rebooted, try to run IE, crash.
reboot, ie, crash
using FTP, got firefox, now run it 100% of the time. IE crashes as soon as you load it now.
it's nice to see microsoft promoting their competitors products. I love firefox
thanks SP2!
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
I live in a country in the Middle East that blocks all kinds of internet access, and I used to get around that by tunnelling out through SSH.
Till I upgraded to SP2.
Now my machine can't connect to loopback addresses (the entire 127.0.x.x space), not can it connect to localhost. I can't uninstall SP2 either. I'm seriously considering reinstalling XP (No, I can't use Linux. My company's product requires Windows)
Also, I have a Wi-Fi network at home that uses a USR9106 ADSL Gateway & Router and a Linksys WRT54G as a repeater. Since SP2, I have difficulty logging into the network when both are active. If I switch off the Linksys, it works. Weird.
I'm the person who posted the original question (I know, I know, I need to get a login).
I apologize for the M$oft usage, I was in a hurry to type the question, and accidentally used M$oft because I see it used so much on this site. I read Slashdot way too much.
One of the main reasons I was asking was because I had told my company of 30 people to hold off on installing it until we heard that it was safe to use. When it first came out, problems were being reported everywhere, it was crazy how bad it seemed from all of the reports. I read dozens of sites, hundreds of posts, etc...
But then lately I've stopped hearing anything about it. I wasn't sure if Microsoft had released patches for SP2 yet, if the problems all had workarounds, etc... Many of the people at my company probably have spyware on their machines, some probably have viruses. They disable firewalls and antivirus whenever it gets installed and set up on their machines. This was probably my biggest concern, since I'd heard that it trashed computers with viruses or spyware.
I use SSH, VPNs, and I also have my 802.11g wireless network running at home using a Belkin router.
I just wanted to thank everybody for their input (even those who post really strange comments or offtopic comments. You never really know what you'll see in posts on this site). I'll probably test installing it this weekend, after creating my own system restore point and backing up all of my critical data.
Thanks,
Dave Hamilton