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The Verdict on WinXP SP2?
A reader writes: "Now that time has passed, people have been giving their opinions as to the effectiveness of Windows SP2. The jury has been good, but mixed." The ITMJ Product Guide is part of OSTG; what's been your, if any, experiences with SP2?
It's been running for nearly six months now on my Thinkpad T40 (I was in the beta program) and I've never had a problem. I've been able to take off my software firewall and let Windows handle it. No stability issues or compatiblility issues.
;)
A job well done, though it'll pain a moderator to let that last comment stand.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
I downloaded SP2 on my laptop and it caused a ripple effect thus disabling 99% of my non microsoft programs. Thus the last straw to be broken for me to switch to Linux. Looks like Bill is now off my christmas card list :P.
The firewall is either on or off, not very configurable.
Well, apart from the port exceptions you can configure under advanced properties, that is. And outbound traffic is configurable per-port or per application. What else do you want?
1) Search no longer working
2) Windows installer no longer working
and the fixes MS lists involve long registry edits that don't usually work. And these problems happen on most machines I put SP2 on. :-\
security center -> bottom of page -> 'firewall settings'
It's got all the goodies you want, including allowing full-access to specific processes and ports.
The firewall was there in SP1 too though, it's just on-by-default in SP2. I fail to see the big deal with it. It's almost an admision of defeat to install the firewall by default.
Also, if I were MS, I'd ask 'do you share files in your home with Network Places?' with a default of 'no' and remove the 'file and print sharing' service, which is a HUGE security risk.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
All the user was getting was the occasional script error in IE when submitting something via a form. Updating IE to the latest version seems like a perfectly valid thing to do as any corrupted DLL or config files would be replaced.
There were no updates from Windows Update except for SP2. As SP2 is officially endorsed by Microsoft you would assume that if the PC was working before the upgrade then it would continue to work after the upgrade was installed, right?
There is no denying the fact that SP2 was responsible for making the PC reset part-way through the bootup procedure.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
You must have a Creative sound card or something. Their drivers for 2000/XP have always been terrible. If you have a SBLive! or Audigy, I recommend getting the kX Project Audio Drivers. They're third party and do a lot of the basic things better than the orginal drivers do. It has things like a fully customizable bus and surround filters so you can upmix stereo music to surround - something Creative dumped when they moved on from Windows 98. EAX is supposedly not supported, but surround seems to be working just fine for me.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
In the slashdot tradition, try it out yourself!
You can always uninstall it.
Agreed. I look after around 40 people in a research lab and have being doing a slow rollout of SP2 on our windows boxes over the past few weeks.
All machines upgraded so far without a hitch. The (newish) firewall seems fair enough and it's actually quite nice when it pops up a window and tells you that something is trying to talk to the world. Downside? Some MS related programs (and Yahoo messeger to name but one) automatically open ports in the firewall.
Even installed a laptop from scratch with a slipstream install with no problems.
Personally, the only bad thing to me is the continual reminders about automatic updates being turned off. At least you can turn the reminder off I suppose.
I don't use IE (and advise people not to, under threat of upgrading their CPU with a hammer) so don't have any comments on that. We're all firefox people here.
Most of my problems come from people opening attachments and running unspecified 'bad' programs.
The Linux people? They're a dream.
The obvious is blinding, that's why no-one sees it coming.
I had similar problems. I installed SP2 and after that the machine just refused to boot. Just before the XP-logo is supposed to show the screen just went blank and nothing else happened. Annoying as hell. Since I had the orgiginal XP-CD I tried the "repair" utility but no matter what I tried the machine just wouldn't boot. I even tried installing the whole thing over the old installation but still nothing. Fortunatly I had two HD's in the machine and since Linux never fail me it was no biggie booting into Linux and getting the files I wanted.
:-/
.haeger
A complete reinstall of XP was required to get the damn thing to work. If I hadn't been required to run IE to access some work related things I wouldn't have installed it again.
Oh, and now I won't forget to backup all files every now and then.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
It can depend a lot on your hardware.
If you're unlucky and have a notebook from Acer before October, it's at risk of crashing horribly, for example. Acer said they didn't support SP2 before that date and refuse to give support for any problems caused by their conflicting drivers they didn't fix before SP2 went RTM, by testing with the numerous public SP2 betas.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
There isn't a way to block outgoing access, as it is an incoming only firewall. Good catch :)
I never said it could do outgoing, and I did say that there are better alternatives out there. Don't get me wrong, I know the firewall in SP2 is limited, but I also know that the information the parent poster provided was completely inaccurate. MeErely wanted to clear up a few things.
And yes, you are entirley correct. The custom section does have that minor exploit, but since the SP2 is targetted moreso with home users 255.255.255.0 would only be their brother/father's/sisters/dog's computer on the same network as them, and thus only someone on the same home network could have unlimited access with default FW configurations. Of course, if I'm wrong please correct me. Also, if a buisness or anyone other than a typical home user network wanted to focus on security, then let's hope their tech knows enough to have a hardware firewall/router and not depend upon software alternatives.
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
The popup killer is also better than the one I was using previously.
I'll give SP2 one thumb up.
I have a HTPC that I have tried to install SP2 on three times, the last time being last night, and each time it has hosed my system. After the second time calling 1-888-SP2-Help they told me to order the CD, then start the machinge in safe mode to do the install. That's what I did last night, and guess what, it still freezes after reboot.
SP2 installed just fine, however the automatic firewall caused a few issues...until it was shut down. Now it works just fine.
We had problems with email, chat software, (trillian/icq) and of course VNC.
What problems? no internet connectivity. Besides, the computer is on dialup...not too worried about being a zombie.
Nobody ever mentions this (well, nobody has a tablet PC), but I have worked with a number of models of tablet PC, and EVERY SINGLE ONE of them suffers from the move to SP2 (and the new tablet input system). '
In every case, Tabtip.exe (the text input program) is slower and takes up much more RAM. And it has to be killed and restarted constantly to stop it from locking up. Tablet text input without a keyboard is a nightmare!
Yeah, the handwriting recognition is better, but mostly I stick to SP1 now.
I'm running a not so cutting edge AMD64 (2800+) and had until recently had few problems. This last weekend I rebooted the machine (since it was acting a little slow and hadn't been rebooted in weeks) and suddenly I can't even start up propely without a DEP happening. And it happens with windows explorer! As you can imagine this was not nice.
After having to boot into command prompt safe mode and editing the boot.ini file, I managed to get my machine functioning fine again. AntiVirus (trend pc-cillan) claims the machine is clean, I hope it is because it seems that I can now only work with DEP set to AlwaysOff.
Other than that I have had not real issues with SP2 other than the expected things where stuff was changed from "on by default" to "off by default"
East Coast Brewers
Well, I've installed it on four machines now (my one at home and three at work), and I haven't had any problems with it. All four machines came up and worked as expected.
About the only change I noticed was that the Security Center was yelling at me on my home machine for not having virus protection, a firewall, and not having automatic updates installed. So I disabled those alerts. (I have my reasons for not using any of that on my home machine - the biggest one being that it's behind an actual firewall that blocks all incoming connections.)
Since I don't use IE and instead use Firefox on all four machines, I haven't noticed any real change with IE yet. About the only thing I noticed was that it apparently doesn't run JavaScript on local HTML files without prompting first, which is kind of weird. Oh, and it warns you before running programs you've downloaded off the Internet, even if you don't run them through the Download dialog.
So, ultimately: no problems, yet, but no real improvements that I've noticed. Granted, most of the improvements were supposed to be added security, so it's not like I'd magically notice my box was more secure. They just kind of run like they've always run.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
They'll support it as long as megacorps are refusing to upgrade their desktops to SP2 because of all the instability problems. I work for one, and we're all under strict orders not to download the update until it's been properly checked out by our IT guys. Go on, tell me you haven't heard that from millions of others as well. :-)
It's just like dropping support for old versions of Windows itself: MS would love to, but since they've borked the update process and their major customers aren't riding with them, they can't do so without seriously damaging their business.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
With SP2, there is no outgoing blocking. When a program not on the exception list tries to open a listening port, there is a pop up.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
You can get Cable/DSL "routers" for less than $100. They're not full blown firewalls, but they can provide NAT and at least removed the machine from being directly connected to the internet.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Firewall's way more advanced in SP2. What I believe you're referring to is TCP port filtering. The firewall in SP2 is at the application level, not the just the port level. The difference is quite major.
The TCP port filtering still exists in SP2 as well.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It tells me those machines are pretty typical. I work for a tier 1 helpdesk on a fairly large (~20k people) campus, mainly supporting student machines. After SP2 was released, nearly half my problems were "SP2 not installing cleanly" problems. I've had a lot of different issues -- mostly networking (a full stack reset after uninstalling SP2 usually fixes these), but quite a few more serious errors like "Unmountable Boot Volume" in a blue-screen loop after installation. As far as failure rate, I'd have to say SP2 is the worst update as far as failure rate goes.
The root cause of a lot of these problems are viruses, spyware, and adware, which is funny because those problems are what SP2 is supposed to fix. Anything that mucks around with any system files gives SP2 fits, especially the network stack. Luckily, most people have either got SP2 now, or have automatic updates disabled until such time as they can reinstall Windows so that they can update their machines again.
http://www.qdi.nl/download/KZ7T.htm
:(
BIOS modification:
1. Fix error of BootEasy
2. Fix ACPI error in Windows XP
(I think I need this one but im afraid....)
BIOS modification:
1. Add QDI Windows XP Recovery CD string.
2. Fixed: No modification of CPU frequency with phaselink clock chip.
3. Update "Athlon XP" string to CPU. (Only the KinetiZ 7E mainboard model can support Athlon XP!)
4. Support LogoEasy( CBLOGO3.0/Qflash).
5. Fixed:Install WindowsXP fail using Geforce2-MX.
Goddamn QDI, my XP upgrade would bluescreen on install until a bios flash.
Still XP is better than ME which was on before, although it blue screens (STOP) like crazy!
Also, I found out yesterday that the Indeo codec is no longer included in Windows XP! All new installations of XP SP1 or higher don't include it, and the Windows version of the codec costs $15 from Indeo's website. I had to play my video on my laptop with OS X (OS 9 Quicktime in Classic), because OS 9 came with an Indeo codec, when previously, Indeo was pretty much the Windows codec to use (before WMV anyways)
Well since many people were acting like I was a fool for not being updated to SP2 (slashdot), I figured it was pretty safe. And since I bought XP for my downstairs box, and it seems cool I upgraded this weekend.
It hosed my video driver. I couldn't see anything once I rebooted except a weird block for a mouse cursor. Took my all night to figure out to boot to Video mode or some such. Once I put in the new driver all has been well. Though the USB mouse is still slow in returning after sleep.
One problem with SP2 that has not been mentioned yet is the fact that in all of MS's infinite wisdom, they broke the definition of a loopback address. According to SP2, a loopback address is defined as ONLY 127.0.0.1, not the entire 127/8 address range. If you use certain types of remote access, such as client-based or clientless VPN methods, it will break the user's access. Although MS issued a hotfix for the problem several months later, this is aother demonstration of their lack of pre-release testing or software QA... --->Rob
I slipstreamed SP2 into XP. It loads from scratch without issue.
And SP2 loads just fine to current installs if you are free of issues. Spyware/Malware/Viruses/Etc. are ALWAYS found on every machine I work on. I boot from a WinPE CD and manually remove that which I know is going to cause problems and then uninstall all crapped-up software. I even run Scandisk & Defrag prior to ensure a smooth transition.
I have yet to have an unexplained issue.
I've upgraded dozens of machines this way. And it keeps me in beer money!
Kenny P.
Visualize Whirled P.'s