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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."
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?
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.
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.
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
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..
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.
It's not just patches. If you want to install extra Linux software these days you had better have a broadband connection t'interweb. Without yum or apt-get resolving all the dependancies will take you a long time and some effort (broken dependancy xyz.lib, now where do I get that.)
Now windows installers are huge. But at least it's usually just a case of downloading and running setup.exe and all is done done for you.
Philip
Signatures are broken
Some new client software that one acquaintence is being pressured to look at by her current vendor doesn't work at all under SP2. The soon-to-be-discontinued client works just fine since it's accessed via a terminal emulator and can therefore be accessed from any platform with a terminal emulator. The new one can't. Nor does it function under XP SP2.
If the vendor came out with a linux or bsd port for the new client then she could forget about MS-Windows altogether and wouldn't have to have those machines set up for dual boot. But then that would make sense.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
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.
Avoiding it means your systems are running on a legacy OS.
You say that like that's a bad thing.
How long before the legal or finance departments need to use a business-critical Web site that requires IE7 for access?
I don't know, you tell me: how long before some criminally stupid web developer creates a business-critical website that requires a specific version of a browser to even work? Not just "doesn't work on Firefox" (which is already in the "criminally stupid" department) but "doesn't work on recent versions of Internet Explorer"? Yes, I know, that's already happened... but in my case it was a website that didn't work on anything later than IE 5.5. Or older, either. Basically, Doctor Evil, this is a sword that cuts both ways.
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.
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.