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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?
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.
Sig under construction since 1998.
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....
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%.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
...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.
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Windows XP SP2, on one hand, does indeed break LOTS of things, but from what I've found, if it was atleast designed for Windows 2000/XP it should work flawlessly, but otherwise maybe. I've had some old (NT4 and Win95) apps break, but thats about it. On the other hand, there are tons of security bugfixes and to top it off, it makes IE more useable (though I perfer Firefox ;-). Some of these security things can be annoying (security center), others good (IE warns before running downloaded files), and others bad (SP2 breaks NMap and other port scanners).
All in all, I'd suggest installing it on a nonessential computer (or VMWare machine) and see if you like/need it. But remember, either you adopt it now, or you adopt it later, but you will eventually have to run it!