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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?
The article's like totally content-free. If you've vaguely heard of XP SP2 before it adds nothing.
And there are no user reviews on the site - the four-day old "discussion" has been "archived".
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.
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Wow talk about relevant... I was at someone's house last night and they had just downloaded Service Pack 2. They were having problems with Internet Explorer so they hoped SP2 would fix it so they let the computer chew away for 5 minutes, then once it was installed they rebooted.
The computer got 5 seconds in to loading Windows before getting a BSOD (which lasted less than a second) before rebooting again.
And again. And again.
After 5/6 crashes it was obvious SP2 had royally fucked the PC up. Luckily we managed to boot up in Safe Mode and use System Restore to undo the effects of SP2 and now the computer is working normally (in fact, the IE problems seem to have gone!).
Now I am very dubious about installing SP2 at work, I think we'll be forced to upgrade before long but MS clearly still have some bugs to squash.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Please keep the Service Pack 2 shot my mother and buggered my dog posts to a minimum.
Thanks,
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. :-\
An admission of defeat to install a firewall by default?
Every linux distro I've installed in the past 8 years has come with a firewall on by default, and most of them were configurable during the install.
I guess it isn't only MS that's defeated.
Bummer.
B
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
Everyone keeps bashing SP2 so much, I decided I'd even this up a bit.
Although I'm not an NT admin, I did install SP2 in a couple of places, and here's my take:
1. Added a simple, probbably far-from-what-we-here-on-/.-would-call-decent but TURNED-ON-BY-DEFAULT firewall to joe-clueless-user. IMHO, this will severely reduce virus infections on the vast amount of joe-user machines that are not properly mainained with good up-to-date malware-protection.
Yes, a minority of 'joe-average's will have stuff break due to this, but the majority will benefit.
2. Enabled windows update by default. Again, will severely increase resilience of a vast number of joe-poorly-mainained-user boxen.
3. Tags files that were downloaded from the internet as such, and gives a proper warning when attempting to execute it. Another simple idea that will decrease suffering of people from malware.
4. [...Finally] added a decent popup blocker.
5. IP configuration GUI improvements. After 9 years of renewing a DHCP lease from the command line, they finally put a "right-click-on-tray-icon--->>REPAIR" option that gets a new one. right-click-->STATUS was also complemented with a new tab that... SHOWS MY IP ADDRESS. BRILLIANT!
Sheesh, and it only took them 9 years. Buy hey, better late than never, I say.
6. After 2 years with flaky, unstable, bugged, alpha, crappy user UNfriendly blowatware bluetooth drivers based on the WIDCOMM "my-dog-can-write-better-software" SDK, Microsoft finally threw in their long awaited BT stack. And boy, was it a sight for sore eyes. It supports all my BT plugs out-of-the-box, Its simple and intuitive to use, and works like charm. BT network driver works great, as does syncing with PDA and a symbian phone. No more 30-minute battles with the Nokia suite, the BT tray icon that stopped responding and a guess-list of 12 serial port drivers to sync my phone with Outlook.
I tip my hat to MS for issuing an *excelent* BT driver suite, albeit 2 years overdue.
And yes, they crippled raw packet API on the TCP/IP stack, so nmap had to write a little workaround.
So go ahead and bash MS all you like, but as far as both myself and quite a clueless family members I inevitably get to support are concerned, SP2 did good. If fewer people have to spend their time, money and nerves treating virus-related computer problems, all the better.
Kudos Microsoft, and thats coming from a hardcore UNIX geek and fulltime Linux/Solaris admin.
Flame away kids.
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SP2 is the first verion of Windows to support Blue Tooth.. and it is a GREAT improvement over using vendor supplied drivers and utilities.
Oh yeah.. the WiFi support and interface is MUCH bettter too.