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Survey Shows Admins Avoiding SP2
bonch writes "Tom's Hardware Guide is running an article about Windows XP Service Pack 2 and its limited acceptance by IT administrators. AssetMetrix is cited in the article as reporting that fewer than 24% of over 136,000 Windows XP PCs in 251 North American corporations even had SP2 installed. THG goes on to describe the reasons given by admins and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of installing SP2."
I heard most of the admins weren't available for comment...because their email program was busy sending a lot of messages to people they don't know..
No way It cannot be..I feel special now. I use SP2 and have no problems. When I first installed it the thing went wonky...and I just ignored all the problems. Then they magically went away.
A heck of a lot of apps are NOT certified for sp2
that I've seen this story before...
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
1) People have enough problems with Windows without worrying about an upgrade that they've heard countless times will BREAK existing applications. 2) Some percentage of the population is simply pirating Windows and is afraid they'll get "caught" if they try to upgrade. 3) SP2 is seen as the first step in Microsoft's "Trusted Computing" initiative. 4) It breaks Halo. C'mon.
Going back to school for entry-level jobs?
Asset Matrix story already covered here
I spent just over 3 months testing SP2 with all of our internal and external applications as well as stress tests for performance differences between SP1a and SP2. SP2 got the green flag the second time round (it failed because some internal applications failed, these were updated as was decided by IM).
I finished doing the last update about 3 weeks ago and have not had any problems relating to SP2 yet which is great.
IMO the only negative thing about SP2 is its size/time to install. It has slowed down deployment because of the bandwidth it uses and the the time it takes to install which is a major impact to production, which means it needs to be down out of office hours which means IT support need to work over time, etc.
While deployment of SP2 was tiring and long I would rather got on with it than wait it out like some companies are doing.
This is a 200Mb file that you need to send to every computer on the corp. network, so even if you were ready to start deploying SP2 you couldn't do so over night.
Further more SP2 adds LOTS of functionality and changes the behaviour of Windows and thus is extremely likely to break things on a corp. setup.
So I am not at all shocked that network admins haven't all installed it yet.. But I bet you if you changed the survey to - "How many network admins are installing (Via Slipstream) SP2 on new installations?" you would get a very positive and different result.
While there might be good reasons for not installing here and there, I suspect most of the so called "admins" are just to lazy or simply clueless when it comes to large scale software distribution.
Installing SP2 in a large corporate environment is nothing to sneeze at, I agree, but that's no excuse for not patching.
It breaks a whole bunch of apps. It is a large enough list that something will probably not work on a high percentage of machines in any sizable deployment of Windows XP.
Windows admins have a good reason to be a bit careful here. Windows Service Packs have a long tradition of making systems or applications no longer function. After getting burned a few times, you learn to be careful.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
fewer than 24% of over 136,000 Windows XP PCs in 251 North American corporations surveyed had SP2 installed.
Get ready for Code Purple, the new improved followup to Code Red, yet again pwning every unpatched Windows machine on the net in a couple of hours, by exploiting bugs that have been fixed long ago.
Some administrators take every opportunity to whinge and moan when Microsoft products have a security vulnerability. When Microsoft do the "right thing" (such as XP SP2), there is more whinging and moaning . Security is not easy - the spin on security being a "business enabler" should have died with the dot com bust. Security restricts and breaks functionality, sometimes deliberately, with the tradeoff that you are now accepting less overall risk in your environment.
Admins threaten corporate IT security by avoiding to fix vunerable machines
Give them some time, then the malware authors will start writing SP2 dependant stuff and we'll all be much better off.
Can the moderators please stop posting reports about SP2 acceptance. We've been bombarded with stories on /. about sp2 acceptance and bugs since sp2 was released. Its windows. Its buggy. and it normally takes long to be accepted. Think about it. Windows XP came out in 2000/2001. Its 5 yrs down the line an people are still taking their switching over from ME/98. Why would we care that sysadmins are taking 6months to install SP2?
I can't imagine what a sad life it must be to have to wake up and support Microsoft products every day.
There must be a constant and relentless amount of rationalizing with the usual "things are getting better" "all software has problems, not just MS" and all the other MS mantras.
Nothing but pity.
Really, am I the only one thinking that something is very broken in Windows when Microsoft has to convince us to apply a (free) upgrade to the system?
I'm not surprised at the reluctance. :-)
Given that many of the SP2 changes relate to networks and firewalls, the bigger the corporate network the bigger the chance the upgrade will take some time to get working for everyone in a company.
If you are used to fixing problems remotely and the upgrade prevents the problem PC connecting to the network... you see the issue
As long as your internet connection is secure, ie, you have a good firewall or router (as you would have in a large corporate environment), then the negative effects of SP2 outweigh the positive ones.
SP2 breaks network connectivity by limiting the number of connections you can make in a given amount of time.
SP2 creates a bunch of annoying and useless popups and warning messages, with no real extra security (compare vulnerabilities found before and after SP2 on sites like Secunia).
The only thing SP2 does that's any good is fix up a bit of XP's so-called "firewall".
I don't blame these admins and I wouldn't be installing SP2 either.
... and then use a time machine and sue the cornflakes company for stealing that sentence.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I recently obtained a copy of Visual Studio 2005 which I wanted to play around with. Install went fine (on XP) UNTIL I tried to install the DOCUMENTATION...which insisted that XP SP2 had to be installed!!
So I installed it. It broke SQL Server 2000 because I hadnt patched it (but wrote information to the event log about how to fix it) but apart from that things went well...
Until I tried to run the spidering app Ive been working on at which point I discovered that XP Pro + SP2 = Castrated System! SP2 limits the number of connections pending opening to 10 (down from 50) and provides no way to change this limit!!!! Unimpressed....
Anyways, given that many pieces of software will only run on systems patched to a certain SP level Id expect that it wont take long before its a required upgrade...having to install it for documentation to work though....that rubbed me the wrong way I must say..
Now, he is stuck with the problem of applying patches. Not only because up2date costs, but the darn thing does not work without internet. He is breaking his head against all web sites where a clear instructions of how to apply patches to this machine.
I could not counter his argument that MS definitely helps customers in this area. I am posting this here, just to know if anyone can point me to correct web sites?.
Any lead will be helpful.
To be honest this was the first I heard about it. I just naturally assumed that shareza didn't peform as well as other dedicated P2P software applications. That registery entry seems to be missing and according to what i've read is hard coded in tcpip.sys. I found software to change the number of connections permited in tcpip.sys here and it might be covered in XP-antispy though I've not tested it yet.
In all fairness I have had few problems with XP SP2. Unfortunatly any problem I've had has been hardware related.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Got it when it became available through Windows Update. No issues, but then, I don't have a lot of weird apps, and Virtual PC doesn't emulate weird hardware, so oh well.
I hardly ever use it, though... except to run Windows Update when a new batch of patches come out.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
If you have a Windows XP laptop with WI-FI and if you go to conferences where there are wireless networks, then you HAVE to get SP2: it's a crime not to.
The bug mentioned in the article, where Windows sets up an ad hoc network on a preferred SSID it can't find, is lethal in a conference network. One fuckwitted XP box stealing the SSID for its ad hoc network can disconnect hundreds of delegates. Any time that you're nearer the XP box than the access point (s.t. the XP box has more signal), your net access is toast, whether or not you're running windows.
I've been at conferences where there were hourly PA-broadcasts begging XP users to turn off their ad-hoc networks. If you have XP SP1 on-line at a conference, then you should expect to have your laptop pounded into fragments by angry geeks. They will be justified.
So, if Microsoft force you to upgrade to SP2 to reduce the number and chances of a compromised PC it's bad because they're forcing you.
If Microsoft don't force you to upgrade then it's bad because they're not being proactive enough in reducing the number and chances of a compromised PC.
Must be great to be a decision maker at Microsoft where whatever choices you take it won't be liked.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Upgrading to Windows XP SP2 is nothing compared to a corporate update of, say, FreeBSD.
Having said that, the problem remains : an admin REALLY BADLY WANTS to upgrade the companies machines, but is always faced with the daunting prospect that even with the best planning, you have NO IDEA what the hell the system is going to do once you start that update.
This is not a probelms with home users who can afford to have their boxes trashed by the upgrade and then freshly installed (or then again, maybe not with that whole activation thing), but in the enterprise it becomes a huge issue when people go without their internet for too long.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Windows XP SP2 is, um, the current version of Windows. Avoiding it means your systems are running on a legacy OS.
When new programs come out that require SP2 (like the upcoming IE7), it will be too late to start thinking about an upgrade... If it breaks your 5-year-old applications, replace them.
If your internally-generated code isn't ready, fix it.
If you can't cope with the lame Window Firewall, RTFM to customize or disable it.
How long before the legal or finance departments need to use a business-critical Web site that requires IE7 for access?
Did the Microsoft grammar checker help you with that sentence?
It has far too few real applications. It will NOT attract proper developers, because the design prevents you from releasing a binary that will work for years. This is intentional, in keeping with the FSF's mantra.
/tmp or the installer will dump core. After the installer is done, edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and add a section called "GL" and put "driver nv" in it. Make sure you have the latest version of X and Linux kernel 2.6 or else X will segfault when you start. OK, run the Quake 3 installer and make sure you set the proper group and setuid permissions on quake3.bin. If you want sound, look here [link to another obscure web site], which is a short HOWTO on how to get sound in Quake 3. That's all there is to it!"
Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package": Yes, because typing in "apt-get" or "emerge" makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking an icon that says "setup".
Linux zealots are far too forgiving when judging the difficultly of Linux configuration issues and far too harsh when judging the difficulty of Windows configuration issues. Example comments:
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?"
Zealot: "Oh that's easy! If you have Redhat, you have to download quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin, then do chmod +x on the file. Then you have to su to root, make sure you type export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 but ONLY if you have that latest libc6 installed. If you don't, don't set that environment variable or the installer will dump core. Before you run the installer, make sure you have the GL drivers for X installed. Get them at [some obscure web address], chmod +x the binary, then run it, but make sure you have at least 10MB free in
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Windows?"
Zealot: "Oh God, I had to install Quake 3 in Windoze for some lamer friend of mine! God, what a fucking mess! I put in the CD and it took about 3 minutes to copy everything, and then I had to reboot the fucking computer! Jesus Christ! What a retarded operating system!"
So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards Windows.
PS you are a turd moneky.
and say that we have had no problems with SP2, even with our in-house applications. I have had no problems at home either, I actually quite like the release.
:(
I do relise it has taken Microsoft 3 years to get a decent release of XP, but it'll be ruind when Longhorn comes out, I know, I've used it
"Sweet llamas of the Bahamas !"
But lunchtime's not for a couple of hours yet!
From article:
"Richard Rushing, CTO for wireless monitoring software firm AirDefense..."
STOP !
THINK !
Are you getting increasingly concerned by the amount of so called computer security firms being quoted in articles from BBC News to Tom's Hardware ?
What credentials to these companies have ?
What business to they actually turn over ?
Who is stupid enough to actually want their services ?
What do they ACTUALLY DO in their job ?
Why are there so many of them ?
Why are their quotes awarded any gravitas in articles at all ?
These are all excellent questions. Answers on a post card.
if someone uses xp as a server... that explains the rest
Have you not read this yet. Also, I seem to remember a reputable article that ranked the varios Linux and Windows distros against each other. Out in front - OpenBSD, and RH Linux 9, Fedora and others not far behind, and XP SP2 not far behind those - but all secure except for a few crappy insignificant attacks. Way back down the line - XP SP1, Win 2000 - these O.S's have all been completely compromised.
We have tricked SUS server to run on XP home editions here ( so we DO have a choice in deploying Suckpack2 ) ( ps SUS officially has to run on a server version of winblows , but this in ONLY to sell more of them, It runs fine on XP ones you alter the installation ).
But even the small updates break loads of stuff.
Yesterday the SUS server was told to deploy the 8 updates MS brought out 2 days ago.
One of the patches totally broke the antivirus software. ( f*#$^&#kers ).
On a SP2 test machine it even had the nerf to tell us that the computer is freakin insecure because no fucking antivirus package was running.
retep vosnul.
Windows patch can be just copied onto a CDRom and kept as reference *wherever u go*.
The patches are needed to fix some issues, as suggested by RHN.
Dont get me wrong dude. I am hardcore fan of Linux. I have suggested him to go for whiteboxlinux now, but feeling a bit low about RH's policy of making things difficult for us.
Let me generalize question (as if nothing specific to my friend). Is there a standard manual way (not up2date) of applying patches to RHEL3?
its past dinnertime in Australia
funny thing this inteweb, there are foreign people all over it !
I'd just do this:
...
apt-get install sp2
or
apt-get update sp2
Oh, wait.
Wrong OS.
Sorry.
Forget about it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Most corporate desktops are behind the curve in some way. Vast swathes of corporate America is still powered by NT4.
Peter
Oh sheesh, which cracked up mods are modding this as insightful ?
It's just a very standard, stupid troll every 14 year old boy makes when he tries to look cool to his other geeky friends...
I am so greatful that I don't have to do this. I started using Linux full time right when XP was release. I have had no experience using XP at all. This I am it sound like I should be greatful. Linux is awsome. At least when the patch are need they are not a full replacement of the OS, 200meg patch?
I work for a large oil company, and our worldwide (probably hundreds of thousands of PCs) rollout of SP2 killed Exceed, Samba, and a couple of inhouse apps. Turns out the NT guys hadn't even considered it. As a UNIX admin, I had to work quite a few long nights to repair the damage.
What they are saying is that if you like your computing experience to be all-Microsoft this is the way to go. Otherwise you'd be much better off with a different browser, email client and personal firewall!!
The latest gadget news and reviews. www.absolutegadget.com
Some admins have been seen avoiding Windows XP altogether
The same goes for basic corporate users, but since system skills can be acquired (by training, replacing, or hiring) there is also the option of linux or BSD.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
...Linux have in the market place?
Think about it, these guys are so paranoid about their systems that they refuse to even apply a freaking SERVICE PACK!
Geez. Trying to convince these guys to upgrade to Linux would be nearly impossible.
This shows what a uphill battle LOTD has to had to have so far.
Such is life.
I am glad I don't have to deal with shit like this personmally. I just use Debian, it's like almost new service pack about every week and it works fine. And I have control on what patches I want to apply and I don't want to apply. (same thing with any other Linux)
When Microsoft do the "right thing" (such as XP SP2),
Microsoft has yet to do the right thing. The security community has been beggng them to back out of the tight browser/desktop integration and "security zones" since 1997, and split the rendering and access functionality of the HTML control into separate components so you CAN run a locked-down sandboxed version of Internet Explorer if you want to... but instead Microsoft refuses to admit they made a mistake and patches symptom after symptom instead of attacking the disease.
That's why I, wearing my "security hat", banned all internet-capable applications that used the MS HTML control for rendering... back in 1997. As long as that ban was in effect we had zero virus and security panics, and we were the only division of our company for which that was the case.
The fundamental design of the HTML control is broken and unfixable. THe only solution is to back out of that design at a very low level, and rewrite all the applications that use it to handle access themselves. In 1997 I expected that Microsoft would do that... by now, it's obvious that they won't. They're afraid of losing face.
The right thing, from a security point of view, is to stop using Internet Explorer, Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Media Player, Realplayer, and all other applications that use the MS HTML control to display potentially untrusted data whether they're shipped by Microsoft or some third party. Microsoft has proven over and over again for the last seven years that there is no other rational course of action.
SP2 and every other "security" patch that Microsoft provides are just smoke and mirrors.
We are talking about a major Windows update here. I'm not updating until I'm held at gunpoint.
I know I'm avoiding installing SP2. After all, I have no idea what it would do if I installed it on any of my Linux or Mac OS X boxes here (nevermind my single lonely OS/2 machine)!
I mean, it could actually cause me to waste hard drive space on those machines, and I need that space for pr0n!
Yaz.
XP Sp2 limiting the number of connection/sec
It does not. It limits the number of pending connections. The biggest problem with this in relation to p2p is that clients often report IP/ports that are unreachable due to firewall/NAT. Hit 10 of those and you can't open any more connections for a while. Also very annoying if you hit a web page where the image server is down. 10 images you can't load? Tarpitted. Personally, I've changed this long ago.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's got a lot of strikes against it:
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I'll switch on SP2 the same day Micro$oft give me back the percentage of money I bought on it in line with the percentage of functionality that is removed from the O/S.
One noticable removal (which is very much a nice-to-have for me) was the FTP Folders that is switched back to the old web directory contents listing after installing SP2.
If there are other FORCED functionality removals that make the O/S useless in certain roles, I very much doubt microsoft are going to refund the product.
----- Concentrate on promoting more than demoting.
1. Open up the Security Center applet in the Control Panel.
2. On the left side of the Security Center window, locate and click the "Change the way Security Center alerts me" link.
3. In the "Alert Settings" window that appears, uncheck any/all the warnings you no longer want to have pop-up when you log in.
4. Click the OK button to save your changes.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
The parent post is moderated as "Funny", but that's what happened to us. We installed SP2 on numerous machines. There were a variety of problems. Re-installing SP2 and rebooting several times often cured the problems. Sometimes it was necessary to reload the entire Windows SP2 operating system.
We troubleshot one of the problems and discovered that SP2 expects that a particular file exists on the target computer, before it has copied that file. So, if the version that was already on the target computer is not recent enough, SP2 will crash. We reported this to Microsoft, but there was only a spacey response, as though confusion reigned. Microsoft did not seem to have the capacity to respond sensibly.
SP2 has numerous fixes for problems with USB 2.0. USB operated much better for us after SP2 was installed.
Microsoft gives us the impression that the company has a sloppy management style supervising coders who are not given enough time to do a good job. If you don't install SP2, you are not giving Microsoft the opportunity to fix some of its bugs. Someone once said that the Microsoft motto was "The whole world is our beta test site." According to that, Windows XP SP2 is just the first release version of Windows XP. We had many, many time-consuming problems with the pre-SP1 version; in our opinion, it was not ready for release; it could be made to work, but it was a time-waster. Maybe it's foolish to believe that two billionaires could care what happens to the less rich.
All of our Microsoft OS computers are now using SP2 with all the most recent critical updates, with no unexplained problems for months.
Be careful with Windows XP updates other than critical updates. Someone made a mistake and updated a computer here recently with a recommended hardware driver. The name of the driver on the Windows Update web site is different from the name of the driver once installed. That computer has never had an "HP wireless keyboard" attached to it.
How many of these are really going to be on company workstations?
- AOL Toolbar: grow up and get a real toolbar
- 2 items in the list are video games
- A "real" graphics designer would use Adobe Photoshop CS on a Mac
- Japanese Roboword Pro - 'nuff said
- WordPerfect Office - seriouly. Does anyone use this anymore? Anyone? Bueller?
- Windows-Eyes - It cant be broken if you cant see it
- A myriad of mediocre B-list virus detection software
- BootSkin? How do you expect me to work if I cant see my picture of Mr. Peepers the Cat when I start my computer?
- Encyclopedia Brittanica Deluxe 2000???? Wheres my ISO discs, this is the last straw
My point is many of the programs on this list will not be encountered by the average admin. Admittedly, BlackICE, Nortons, Adobe, these would certainly make me pause before upgrading if they were installed enterprise wide... But the rest of this list is crap, and to use it to illustrate a point doesnt really work. I find it hilarious, though, that VirtualPC doesnt work...both interiorlly, and exteriorlly.
AC dude, unfavorable facts are not bashing. That probably took him/her/it five minutes to throw together. There's plenty more where that came from. - AC dude
...Not everybody. I still have two users that have legacy (ie. OLD AND CRAPPY) applications that were a hack to work on XP SP 0-1. I'm just not feeling like pressing my luck right now.
Of course, the people who do run SP 2 have reported exactly ZERO problems. True, I did have to reinstall Office on one lady's machine, but she also had the worst spyware/adware collection I've ever seen, so that probably had something to do with it.
Bottom line? In my experience, SP 2 is not better or worse than any other MS Service Pack. Yes, there are programs that are problematic, but mostly it works just fine. I mean, the worst issue was the pop-up blocker in IE preventing Peoplesoft from making an Excel spreadsheet, which was easily remedied by making the Peoplesoft web-server a trusted site for everybody via Active Directory Group Policy. Piece of cake.
Tough day? How about a free Mac mini?
Regarding Windows, are you sure you can easily determine which patches need to be applied once you've got them onto CD? A friend was trying to do this for Windows XP but couldn't find out which patches they needed. How do you do this?
In answer to your general question about applying patches to RHEL, I believe up2date uses yum, which uses rpm. I'd guess you could use yum or rpm (depending on the exact function you want).
Matt
I've never seen so many Windows people post under one topic before. Talking about "patchin" and "clicking on .exe files". How quaint.
Why didn't everyone install SP4 on Windows NT4.0?
Why didn't everyone install Windows Millenium?
It has to get worse before it can get any better. America is fully capable of handling Microsoft, all by itself, without the aid of Europe and China.
We participated in the private betas for months and months. Found several bugs and app compat issues - got them either resolved or worked around. Shipped it to our users, and are currently at 90% of our 60,000 machines. I can't claim that there have been no problems. There have been some web sites that need work (due to some of the new restrictions in IE) and some apps that are used by only a few users that have some problems - but in the main, this has gone extremely well. I honestly can't figure out why people are waiting on this.
It seems incredibly disingenous of people to on the one hand say, "Windows is full of holes, help us here Microsoft, we are bleeding." and on the other hand say, "well, that's nice but I'd rather keep bleeding than spend the time and effort to apply the fix."
Get with the program IT Admins! Work with the vendors of the apps if you have to, get the firewall exceptions in and SHIP this already!
I work at a large place with about 6,000 computers. The only reason that XP2 is not installed is that we have no way of deploying it. We have SUS but not SMS or Altaris or the like. Without something to do the distribution its a major pain in the butt. And the management does not understand that their current method of operating is screwed up enough to fix it.
kinda like your post huh?
The application we use to allow our technicians work trouble tickets through a web interface got completely hosed by SP2. They were fairly apathetic about the whole thing sending a link to a MS KB article that didn't solve the problem. There attitude was pretty much it was our fault for using SP2. I finally found a solution that involved basically hacking the registry to tun off one the SP2 security features which was breaking the products javascript.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
If the OS was perfect, think of the IT jobs that would be lost. I remember a few years ago watching a tech TV show. The interviewer was hassling some guy that just wrote a book on XP. He kept saying what we really need is a smart computer we can talk to like HAL. The author looked at him and replied, "Well we know how bloody well that turned out".
TomsHardware pretty much sucks I think it is safe to reason that only admins who suck would participate in the survey. I have personally rolled out SP2 to over 1,000 client machines with no issues; update your BIOS, update your apps, apply SP2, have fewer issues. Is it really that hard to do your job?
Microsoft gives us the impression that the company has a sloppy management style supervising coders who are not given enough time to do a good job. If you don't install SP2, you are not giving Microsoft the opportunity to fix some of its bugs. Someone once said that the Microsoft motto was "The whole world is our beta test site." According to that, Windows XP SP2 is just the first release version of Windows XP. We had many, many time-consuming problems with the pre-SP1 version; in our opinion, it was not ready for release; it could be made to work, but it was a time-waster. Maybe it's foolish to believe that two billionaires could care what happens to the less rich.
I got the same expression from earlier versions of Windows (have not touched XP yet because I dislike the idea of "activation").
Considering the motivation of Microsoft management, I think it is simple profit maximizing, coupled with a bit of shortsightedness. So far, they could get away with releasing software that has only beta quality, so why spend more money and time on debugging?
Of course, this can backfire when serious competition appears, and seems to do so in the server market by now. At least, I frequently read about studies that show rapid growth of server-side Linux.
C - the footgun of programming languages
is that 24% is about how many of NT/XP admins out there are really qualified...
If you've got a system plugged in to the public internet and you aren't using something similar to the subject line to update
I'm a bit more forgiving for desktop use - I can type 'yast' on this machine and begin changing things. One day soon, when I take the time to make vmware run on FreeBSD 5.3 I will again experience holy homogenous happiness and life will be perfect.
I have heard of this SP2 of which they speak, but I have no fear, because I am far away from the blasted lands and their filthy start button virus infested machines
Climb, brothers, climb! Go higher and higher, until no flabby, graphical interface only OS with an incontinent TCP/IP stack can follow. Dwell in the land of headless awareness and be at peace.
Namaste.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Recently I was in a remote location with a computer that came with the building. I reformatted and reinstalled windows. I needed to register it, get a new video driver from nvidia, and then go to windows update to get patches and then SP2. I was on a wireless dialup connection.
Sometime into downloading the first patches from windows update, the machine started to act oddly. Down to a crawl. Somehow during that time a worm had taken over and installed 30 or so different malware programs.
Screwed!
There seems to be no way to get that computer secure on the internet without either buying 3rd party firewall or SP2 cd which was not an option at the remote location.
Microsoft's crime was that it allowed this to happen in the first place, not that it (finally) included security features in the operating system.
It might be a statement about not wanting to install even more Microsoft updates, but it also sounds like this person and his friends don't want to be bothered with things like anti-virus protection and updating that protection, which seems completely lazy and careless to me.
We have this methodology at work. I call it, 'Patch when it hits the fan'. Last time we did a major patch is when Nimda kicked our butts. Of course the patch was out weeks before.
The issue is that admins and systems support are lazy. We haven't moved to SP2 because no one wants to get off their butts and test.
Of course, all my systems are tested out on XP SP 2. :-p
In God we trust, all others require data.
I have XP in various stages here, some with SP2 and some without. It is so much work to install SP2 and get it to work 'better' than SP1 that I have to wait until I have plenty of spare time before I start. I still prefer 2000 pro which is on the server (or Linux on my machine but the users do not want that) and I keep trying to talk people into downgrading to 2000. I am sure that by the time that XP gets as reliable as 2000 I will have succeeded and they will all say 'I thought you wanted us to go to 2000?'.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
I really cannot blame the IT administrators there. Until Microsoft can create a program that works with all programs, it's not time for them to release it.
Yes, it does fix a lot of things, but those things should be downloaded via Windows Update and then as a SP once everything is fixed.
Please, please, please... Let's try to make ourselves a cut (however slight) above the rest of the wailing masses. I am so tired of the anti-MS cattle on /. Are they a big evil corporation? YES. Do they do mean, nasty things, often... YOU BET. Do they occasionally get something right.. (here's the tough one).. YES!
On to SP2. Although I don't work in the IT dept any longer, I know most of the people quite well and hear about when stuff is bad(tm). There are over 300 machines in the dept. that I work in. # of problems with SP2? ZERO. Is it perfect right after install - no way, lots of stuff doesn't work. HOWEVER, once the TCP Limit is fixed (yes, 3rd party fix, and MS should include it, but they, it exists), NX disabled (not ready yet) and assorted registry keys tweaked, it works fine.
Now, for the apostles of Linux - How many of you install the standard base sytem and change nothing? That's right, ZERO! You can't take stuff 'out of the box' and expect perfection. Same with SP2.
Is SP2 perfect, HELL NO. Is a PROPERLY setup install of it, tweaked by IT people with a clue better than SP1, YES.
Considerable improvements exists in SP2 (USB, wireless, etc). Granted, some things are garbage (windows firewall.. hahahaha!) but they are easily dealt with, removed, or ignored. It is foolish to ignore the good parts of SP2 just to complain about a cheesy built in firewall.
Broken apps. I have yet to hear of a broken app that doesn't have a patch, hasn't been replaced by a newer version, or can't be fixed with a couple of tweaks. We author and utilize a lot of in-house software, and the only thing an MS patch or upgrade, including SP2, has broken involved new security permission in .NET (and can be fixed either in the software, or by the blocked requests)
At least be thankful that MS fixes some of it's mistakes.
I haven't personally seen an SP2 install go bad yet.
Over 150 computers in our office, several computers at home, not a single one has had a problem, or had a program that wouldn't run after the install.
People, stop saying going to a Mac is easy and the most logical choice... for many it is simply not an option for financial reasons. And don't post that "high cost" Mac is just a myth... it isn't. Look at the price of a Mac Mini, their cheapest model, which isn't very good hardware unless you get the extras, therefore bringing the price back up again.
Go ahead Mac loving mods, mod me down as flamebait... you bastages.
Meh.
On my home PC, SP2 installed fine, and I did not notice any problems at all. Except I have an H: drive now--apparently a new DVD device. SP2 is a great upgrade. You get a free DVD player! Maybe its a internet DVD scheme or something? I think it is so I can email Blockbuster and they mount a ISO on my new virtual DVD player. Wicked.I hope I can get it working with Wine too.
I find it quaint that your computer freezes up when you're playing World of Warcraft, browsing the web, and using WinAMP. I find it disheartening that you describe this situation as "working just fine".
I play World of Warcraft (full screen or windowed mode), run a web brower, have iTunes running, have FTP connections open, have disc-sycning programs kicking in (around 12:15 am), and have desktop capturing software taking pictures of 3 1280 X 1024 monitors every 30 seconds SIMULTANEOUSLY and I don't have any freezes, crashes, nothing.
If I experienced freezes such as you describe, I would seriously consider migrating. OS X (10.3.8) works pretty well for me.
Dell Latitude D600s. We have about 400 of them. According to dell's website, and an official warning notice they sent us, Windows XP sp2 causes "random hard drive corruption on Latitude D600 systems" that are below bios rev A12. We order them in bulk, and we send them out all over the country. We could of course push an update of the bios either by group policy or our desktop management software.. but for those five or six users who will undoubtedly power off their machines in the middle of the update... we'd be screwed. Until the sneaker net catches up to all of the D600s we have floating around, then we cannot and will not install SP2 company wide. We do install it when we find a system that doesn't fit into that category, and I'm running it on my Inspiron 8600 with no problems. Hopefully it won't be too long before we can flip the switch.
Speak for yourself.
Our Platform: WinXP Sp 1 on all desktop and laptop machines
Our Network: Token Ring over Type 1 wiring
Number of Machines: Roughly 20,000 machines company-wide (in multiple cities)
Imagine pushing out Sp 2 to all of those machines. Even if we do it in phases it's going to bring the network to its knees. A simple worm took us offline a few weeks back. It took forever to download SP 2 onto my home machines over a considerably faster connection than I have here at work too.
Now, also consider we're still using a LOT of legacy apps, we're still connecting into old old old mainframes and databases. A good chunk of our business relies still on that old stuff (though we are migrating off of it... slowly). What happens if SP 2 renders those apps useless? We're screwed.
It took us over 2 years to migrate from 98 and 2k on the desktops to XP... we JUST finished that project recently. SP2 is going to kill us if we can't find a way to keep it off.
I bet it would turn Bill Gates pale if he found out that only 25% of the 136,000 machines still have Windows on them. The rest were upgraded to Linux.
Run the most stable software that Microsoft has ever put out... Windows 2000. Sadly I have lockups 2-4 times a week on my 2 year old laptop when I run XP on it. When I run Windows 2000 or Linux, no lockups whatsoever. XP looks nice with clear type and boots up much faster than Win2k which helps when the system freezes but Win2k beats it hands down for stability.
To me this gives a big shot in the head to the idea that patching is an acceptable security assurance mechanism. The fact is that patches often have side affects, and a good organization will test to make sure they aren't going to be crippled by these side affects before installing the patches. This equates to time, money and a period of vulnerability.
You really have to get it right the first time as much as possible in order to have a product with good security.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I'm the IT manager at my firm, and only a small handful of my users have SP2 at the moment. I'm actually waiting for SUS 2.0 (or WUS or WSUS or whatever misleading name they chose this week) to be released, then everyone gets SP2. I did notice that SP2 (annoyingly) throws warnings at different points in my login script. It would be nice if SP2 ignored the AD specified login script.
I don't like M$ as much as the next admin, but I have over 150 XP machines, every one of them with SP2 and I didn't have any problems. I used M$ software update server to roll it out and nobody even noticed. The only thing I had to do was open a port for our remote control software and IM.
hack a day
Someone once said that the Microsoft motto was "The whole world is our beta test site."
--
This is true of *all commercial software, indeed all software period, except software such as military software, where a bug spells death for many people.
Those apps are tested correctly and the developers are often given enough time to do a good job or the deadline is extended til it's "right".
There are always bugs, a lot of them. The number usually goes up exponentially with the size of the binary. Considering the size of Windows XP the number of bugs we have found is only scratching the surface.
Most may not be noticible to the average user til they do something very specific which triggers the buggy code. Then it comes down to whether or not they notify microsoft, and MS actually listens to them and decides to fix it.
Unrealistic software deadlines always increase the size of the issue. All software deadlines are unrealistic, so you get lots of bugs in every app.
I am the IT manager at my firm, and only a handfull of users have SP2 at the moment (including myself). I'm waiting for SUS 2.0 (or WUS or WSUS or whatever they chose this week) before the rollout of SP2.
In addition, I think it would have been nice if SP2 would have been set to ignore the AD specified login script, instead of throwing warnings when it runs.
this is my experience with SP2... I installed a beta of it (yay technet) and it completely screwed up my computer. basically, networking didnt work. i dont remember if i was able to uninstall it, of if i had to reinstall windows...
i installed it again when it actually came out, and it worked great.
Wasn't it just yesterday we read that article on Infoweek(I think) that declared that linux would NEVER defeat windows on the desktop because buisnesses required a stable, solid platform they could count on? And windows was the epitome of that because of it's (supposedly) notorious stability between releases?
Hmmmm
-Bucky
Yep, but I don't pretend to be insightful...
The fact that neither of these games now work in XP is reason enough not to want to upgrade. I upgraded without knowing that and went back to play them again. Man I was pissed. I had to install windows 2k on a spare partition to play all my old games. I wish game companies could take alittle time and fix whatever minor changes are needed to make their games work with XP SP2. I guess I could buy a console and play my FPS with a joystick.
O OO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! ;)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The problem with XP's sp2 is that if it fails, you're likely in for a complete re-install.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Don't scream at Microsoft, they're merely listening to customer demands and trying to make Windows more secure.
If you want someone to scream at, scream at the vendors who make shoddy, ill-written software that won't work under SP2, who still haven't released product updates that are compatible with SP2.
And too bad so sad. MS made their bed, now they are laying in it.
for a couple reasons.
First, SP2 hasn't caused any problems in the broad range of machines I've seen or dealt with. While I don't doubt the 24% estimate, I sincerely doubt that 76% of machines lack the upgrade as a result of security concerns, which leads me to the second reason...
If approached by someone questioning why the machines aren't up-to-date, the lazy IT manager, feeling backed into a corner, will make an excuse about how he is still evaluating the potential dangers of the controversial upgrade.
In other words, studies show 9/10 people avoid taking lethal doses of cyanide if it is suggested by a pharmacutical company.
mattdev@server$ touch
cannot touch `/dev/genitals': Permission denied
Take a look at Microsoft Windows Software Update Services and the associated client and quit spouting off shit you clearly have no clue about. Our organization was able to roll out SP2 to 80 machines in a few hours with minimal issues. We could even send WOL packets to any machine that was left off, so nobody had to leave their chair.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/updat eservices/evaluation/previous/default.mspx
If you would have turned on the built in XP firewall (and YES, there was one before SP2 - it was just less configurable) when you had built the machine this would not have happened.
from TFA : SP2 offers significantly better protection against system buffer overflows. These represent a major category of exploit used by black hat hackers to steal your passwords and seize your social security number. SP2 does this by compiling many more system binaries, Microsoft says.
What exactly does this mean? Were they interpreted rather than compiled before? It think what they mean is 'SP2 does this by fixing many more broken system binaries'. (using tools to detect and/or prevent buffer overflows)
Damned Microsoft somehow changed my Automatic Update settings. I prefer to be notified and have nothing done. I then wait a week, google for complaints about the patches, before letting the buggers in.
Last night, the damned update tool put them in automatically. I had to go back in and revert my settings. Pretty futile, considering Microsoft will screw me over again at some point. Thank god I only keep XP for games (and taxes)...
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Stupid n00bs.
MS has problems, - patch it.
You can't learn everything from books f00lz.
"I'm the guy that watches the DNS server"...
pffft.
So, what is that solution anyway (and, I agree that limiting that way is basically suckage)?
There are other ways of finding services - including broadcast, NIS maps, &etc. (and, no, I don't know how MS services are published; I am a "Unix head". I presume that MS has followed standard solutions here).
Anyway... if you *really* want to do it your way -- look for the machine that worked the last time first; then look at the machines in the arp cache, then broaden the search. I do beleive that MS machines natter at each other all the time, so the arp cache should have a good reflection of your local machines.
YMMV
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I was under the impression that largish computing establishments don't run XP, they run Win 2K or 2003. (I can understand having this problem with laptops.)
I'm surprised so many establishments find updating their enterprise with SP2 so difficult. (Most SP2 problems I've seen come from updating PCs in use, not clean reinstalls.) I presume most of them would follow good practices like not allowing the user to install software on their machine, and separate the user space from the executable space. This allows you to "clone" machines. Do validation testing for all applications on a small group, and then one weekend wiping all the drives with the new OS mirror copy. At very least, segregate your servers from the users' PCs. Then at least you can update your servers and reduce your security vulnerability. Disclaimer: I am not an Windows Administrator.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
It's funny to hear people whine about SP2 and how much trouble it was to install it and that they shouldn't have been "forced" to install it in the first place. These are often the same people who claim Linux is too "unfriendly" to use. Well, it took a great deal of brainwashing by MS, but apparently it's worked: the meaning of "unfriendly" has been changed in Microsoft's favor. Congratulations, Bill!
If you want a way out, make a way out. Don't complain about lack of Linux hardware support, BUY Linux-supported hardware and switch ASAP. No more forced upgrades with an already stable system. It will be well worth it in the not-all-that-long run.
Vote with your dollars. Vote with your head.
Your suggestions are all OK - for an experienced home user.
But when you start talking about a corperation where any little thing you mention (like modifying the firewall to work with a given MS App) has to be done to LOTS of computers, it's a much bigger deal - not to mention that any one of those computers may be running some critical thing you've never heard of that suddenly breaks. One box tucked away in an office that provides some critial service to the company? Oh yes, it happens ALL THE TIME. And if you break one of those you may cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, or possibly be sued.
It's quite a difference keeping a corperate computer healthy on a large scale and keeping a computer together that can play Half Life 2 on demand.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Take the cover off your case. Direct a small fan towards the general direction of your Video/Graphics card. Problem solved? ---Get Better Cooling!
Happened to me. All my SP1 machines worked. Added SP2 all the machines stopped working with older games released circa 1997.
Pretty friendly there, I'd say.
that says more about your insistance on token ring than it does about windows.
It's 2005, If you can't afford the wires at least make the move to wi-fi.
Your users must hate you.
Our company just as recently as last year finally migrated the last desktop off of Windows 95 to Windows NT!
:) Our main desktop right at the moment is Windows NT SP6.
:)
It wasn't for lack of trying either. Some of our users are extremely resistant to any sort of change, they're going to have a hissy fit when they have to switch to XP.
We're upgrading hardware and with that comes Windows XP. SP2 has been avoided for now. Maybe sometime in late 2007 they'll consider SP2.
"If you don't install our service packs and updates, we're not responsible for your computer's security." ...
...
... this hasn't just been as of SP2 ... Microsoft has broken application compatibility before. For instance, when Outlook became well known as a method of executing malware, Microsoft's answer wasn't to actually fix it (until later) but to instead tell people to turn off the options that allowed it to do it at all.
"I installed SP2 and my applications won't run."
"But your computer is safe and secure!"
Seriously
And before the fanboys come yell at me:
1) I run XP on 1 box, 2K on a laptop. Yes, I -also- run Linux but I've been running and admin'ing Windows for longer and consistently.
2) I installed SP2 a few months ago. Overall it worked but it did break some programs I use (not Microsoft's middleware or Halo, either) and so I had to spend a day tweaking settings and downloading things that edited things like the tcpip.sys binary. NOT a good thing and still not fixed via MS hotfixed. That was for my personal box, imagine how much the XP admins out there are dreading having to do this for entire enterprises!
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
There are more than two alternatives, even on the PC platform. Admittedly, none are as widespread or as well supported, but they do exist.
To me, the real quesiton is why people consider any of the existing operating systems acceptable at all. Given the current 'state of the art', anyone who is not a complete computer addict (such as myself, admittedly) would be better off avoiding computers entirely; they consume far more time and effort than the save. The entire computer field remains nothing but hype.
I wonder how many people installed the beta, had problems, and now are just never going to install SP2?
Installing it slipstreamed is really the only way to go. You're already going to have to back up all your data in case something goes wrong.
Upgrading from XP->SP2 works just fine. Except for the fact that it backs everything up, allowing you to uninstall it. Why is this bad? Simply for space reasons. You have all that crap that you don't need backed up, wasting space. I'd much rather just start off with SP2 (and that's what I did.)
I did have some trouble using some custom themes, they don't like the wireless configuration. I just use trial and error nowadays, because some don't like the slight changes, but theres always Windows Classic for peace of mind.
My eMachines laptop got blown out of the water with an Windows XP Home SP2 install. (Windows XP Pro, apparently, didn't have the trouble in question).
Upon reboot, I got an blue screen complaining about the safety of one of the drivers. "Fine, fine, I don't think my driver manufacturer is trying to kill my machine. I'll reboot to safe mode.
No dice. It stayed as steadfastly blue as it had last time. The recovery CD didn't copy enough config over to prevent it bluescreening. It was a good thing the machine was relatively new and I could do things from scratch, or I'd be a few days out, frantically downloading Knoppix on any disks I could find.
So I held off on SP2 for a while. When the manufacturer's fix came in, it ended up being an adjustment to the registry.
Now if that had happened on a larger scale? That could take out a business, especially with the monoculture of machines a lot of businesses seem to have.
We've run into troubles ourselves where we configure two usually-separate programs onto the same machine and configure it to use localhost. The firewall-turns-on setting busted a few of our deployments before we figured out what was going on.
I can see why IT would stay away.
Ouch.
-- Ritchie
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
I just gave in and applied SP2 last week. No real reason, just gave in to The Fear. Well my machine went from crashing once a week to crashing 4 times a day. Most of the time it would die seconds after a boot till it 'warmed up' then it would work fine till I tried to shut it down, at which point it would lock up. Last night I gave up and removed the patch. Happy to say my crash rate is back to the M$ acceptable norm.
If stuff with bad security were all that broke after installing SP2, that would be fair enough... but it just ain't so.
For a start, taking out a previouly stable system is hardly a security fix. There have been numerous cases reported where this happened, often requiring a reinstallation of the entire OS.
Then there are numerous cases of broken hardware support, where devices that previously worked fine no longer do -- and not just networking stuff, but USB devices, hard drive subsystems, and more. How can you class any such failure as a security fix?
I find it hard to believe that all of the software that is known to break does so because either it was a security risk or it violated Microsoft's interface standards, too. It's the difference between breaking something like a poorly written personal firewall and breaking something like a completely non-Internet-enabled graphics app. SP2 has plenty of victims in both categories.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
All of these stories about SP2 breaking things seem to be coming from businesses running goofy "custom" software. Yeah, there's a lot of that stuff out there. But all of it is shit.
Anybody who has had to admin a corporate network knows that most of the really expensive custom software is incredibly poorly made, and a lot of it requires a specific version of an OS, and specific hardware, to get it to work. Basically, no testing is done on that stuff. They finish it, it works on their hardware, so they start selling it (plus exorbitant yearly service/update contracts) to gullible businesses who have admins that don't know what they're doing.
This isn't Microsoft's fault.
If SP2 breaks some piece of software you have, bitch to the vendor for an update. If they refuse to update, sue them and switch to a different vendor.
The hardware updates may be a little more problematic, but even they can help sometimes. However updates to WLan cards are not always good to install, since they can break WEP and/or WPA.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I think that it may be a bit of a mischaracterization to say that admins are "avoiding" SP2 -- at least in larger, more security-conscious enterprises. The reality of the matter is that big roll-outs like SP2 take a while to lay the groundwork for.
Only the laziest and most incompetent of system administrators would just blast SP2 out into their environment without testing it first on their systems. That QA process needs to involve all of the environment's different system types and software. For a small shop, that might take a few days or weeks. But for a large organization with potentially dozens of hardware variations and hundreds of pieces of software to QA, that process takes much longer. That's not to mention the fact that any issues with critical software have to be dealt before the roll-out can begin en masse.
According to the folks I've talked to in other large enterprises, it also seems that organizations are tending to combine their SP2 roll-out with other standardization efforts that would also need their own QA-retrodevelopment cycle. At my shop, for example, we're combining our SP2 roll-out with a project removing local users from the "Local Administrators" group on their PCs, leaving them with Power User rights only (combined with SP2, bye-bye spyware). As you might imagine in a 22,000+ client environment with more than 300 apps to QA, it takes a while. Other people I've talked to are combining SP2 with roll-outs of other updates (anti-virus, etc.), too, so that probably helps explain the lag also.
I guess my point is that, yeah, it's been released for quite some time, but there are most likely reasons beyond "Oh no! It might bluescreen my boxes!" that administrators haven't applied it yet.
That was probably just your user bringing in his own wireless keyboard and "installing" it himself at 7am. When it didn't work, he just unplugged it, put it back in the box/bag and returned it.
What you're seeing there are the driver droppings from his failed self-upgrade.
Either that, or Windows Update just sucks.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
to SP2 because they want Windows to remain as insecure as it was under XP SP1, as that makes Linux an easier sell. The "greater stability" argument for Linux has been gone for a while now, so the remaining main argument is "greater security". Many are playing that argument for all its worth, and are loath to see any improvement in Windows that would lessen the effect of that argument. Hence, they spread FUD about SP2 breaking everything in sight in order to scare people from upgrading.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Ok so i decided to upgrade to SP2 finished the download installed ok, then i decide to play a DVD hello what's this my DVD dirve is not there also missing is my cd burner. Turns out that i'm using a lite on combo drive and a lite on dvd burner which don't have trusted drivers and hence won't work. Guess what got removed very quickly :)
It was the second, a failure in Windows Update. The computer is in our office, and we haven't bought HP stuff for years, since Carly Fiorina began the reign of poor quality products.
The update clearly said it was for some other keyboard, but what it installed was HP.
I go on vacation one week and I miss everything.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
The above means, on an XP SP2 box, you can't do a legitimate scan faster than 10 IPs/120 seconds..
Sure you can once you learn what the non-blocking sockets are for.
"If the test fails, you have to wait for a fix from the vendor"
Are they still in business? How much will the charge for the upgrade? What if they won't do it? What if they will but it takes them a year to get it done?
"or make one yourself."
How do you do that without the source code? Put a kludge wrapper or something around it? Do you have enough documentation to do it? Reverse engineering is hard!
Meanwhile, the business using Free Software in critical systems does not have any of those questions!
The sockets in my installer were non-blocking. It was a single-threaded application that tried to open a nonblocking TCP connection on port 3306, to every IP in A.B.C.* (for every network interface) and 127.0.0.1.
I also added a nasty hack of adding an user account to the server with the login name and the password being hashes of the application's serial number, embedded in the binary. That account was tightly stripped down and had no rights except connecting and running SELECT on a table saying the database is installed. It's an ugly kludge, but worth it as it can tell people whether they're connecting to Mars vs connecting to a wrong server vs using a wrong username -- things that BDE can't otherwise differentiate between.
And no, spawning additional threads doesn't do anything for XP SP2. The limit of 10 pending connections is system-wide.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.