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Windows Operating Systems Software Microsoft Upgrades

The Verdict on WinXP SP2? 471

Posted by Hemos from the the-people-have-their-voice dept.
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?
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The Verdict on WinXP SP2? More

The Verdict on WinXP SP2?

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  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @06:47AM (#10828521)
    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".

    • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)

      by AlexTheBeast ( 809587 )
      In the slashdot tradition, try it out yourself!

      You can always uninstall it. [tech-recipes.com]

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @07:48AM (#10828804) Homepage
      True, but this is more about asking for Slashdotter's opinions.

      In my case, SP2 has been a mixed bag, but in a very strange way. At work, I upgraded our entire fleet using SUS (we're a small company of about 50 machines) after testing with a few testbeds. Outside of explaining to users what the information bar was, it installed like a dream. I was very satisfied to see even basic stuff, like the admin share, closed off via the firewall until you open it.

      On the other hand, my home computer has been less than friendly. I built a cutting-edge rig with an Athlon 64 chipset, and I've run into all kinds of strange bluescreens. A lot of them have to do with DEP (data execution prevention). I want to leave it on, but I've had to create so many exceptions I wonder how useful it is. Offhand, two apps I know cause problems are UT2004 and NAV 8 (haven't tried 9 yet). I'm not too thrilled that *programs* now (not just drivers) can bluescreen a current NT OS.

      Overall, I'm fairly satisfied with it though, just based on work experiences. The problems at home are addressable -- although I'd hate to be young and foolish, just building my first gaming rig, and wondering what the hell is going on.

      • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

        by DigitumDei ( 578031 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @07:58AM (#10828860) Homepage Journal
        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"

        • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)

          by dnoyeb ( 547705 )
          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.

  • Working fine for me (Score:5, Informative)

    by David Horn ( 772985 ) <davidNO@SPAMpocketgamer.org> on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @06:51AM (#10828536) Homepage
    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. ;)
    • I've been able to take off my software firewall and let Windows handle it.

      Bad move, I'd say. As the article points out, the windows firewall is inbound only. You should still have a software firewall in case you get a rogue application trying to get outbound access. Even if you never install any more applications, you might not be happy with (for example) Windows Media Player or some other MS application 'phoning home' unexpectedly.

    • Re:Working fine for me (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've been able to take off my software firewall and let Windows handle it.

      Did your copy of SP2 include a hardware firewall for free then? Hint: The firewall in SP2 is intended as a basic firewall solution for those who do not already have a firewall. If you already had a firewall running you should have left it running; your existing firewall will have more features and be more secure than the one supplied with SP2.
    • Ahh... the first non-hater post. I'll respond here since I'm in the same boat.

      Before SP2, I thought that I was going to be able to quit my job and start a Windows reinstallation business because of all the spyware out there. SP2 stops nearly all of it because it disables ActiveX plug-ins by default. Although it does allow the user to install them through the 'information bar', these are the same idiots that were previously clicking 'yes' on the security warning so that they could get to the porn or MP3s

  • SP2 is risky (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wiggys ( 621350 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @06:52AM (#10828542)
    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.
    • Well, if you would install a service pack onto a faulty installation, you're asking for problems. I installed the beta at work (yes, I like danger), and it's worked fine. I even upgraded it to the release of SP2, and it's just as fine. In fact, I've yet to see a single SP2-related issue in ANY of the SP2 machines I've built/upgraded. The improvements to IE are great, and really help with security.

    • Re:SP2 is risky (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @06:58AM (#10828573)
      Sorry pal, service packs aren't magic powder. Anyone with experience in computers should know that. When you're patching your OS, you don't patch over parts that seem funky, it's a recipe for disaster. Patch-fixing might work for Starcraft when the app is broken, but you don't play double-or-nothing with Windows itself.

      At work we're running Spybot, Ad-Aware, and a full virus scan before we even THINK of dropping SP2.

      SP2 didn't break the PC, SP2 exposed bad practices in PC ownership. (and BTW, I'm no MS fanboy, I'm MS-free at home and a full-time Mac tech).

      • Re:SP2 is risky (Score:4, Informative)

        by wiggys ( 621350 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @07:04AM (#10828603)
        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.
        • There is also no denying that there was more wrong to the machine than the "ocsional script error in IE". An SP2 installation is very unforgiving to a machine that has a lot of malware/spyware in it. A lot of that same software will cause IE to act flaky. Chances are your friend has a very compromised machine and SP2 couldn't install properly because of it. An installation of SP2 is not just a matter of "letting it grind away for 5 minutes". It takes a good amount of time for the installer to download the
          • An SP2 installation is very unforgiving to a machine that has a lot of malware/spyware in it. A lot of that same software will cause IE to act flaky. Chances are your friend has a very compromised machine and SP2 couldn't install properly because of it.

            So let me get this straight... Microsoft's ueber-update to improve Windows security works great, as long as you install it on a machine that was already secure enough not to have malware/spyware on it?

            • If you can come up with an OS patcher/installer that always knows every piece of available malware/spyware and all of the various combinations that happen depending on what nefarious apps a person's machine has been compromised with, and then can take corrective action that is always 100% applicable to the precise compromised machine configuration you should go into business, genius.

              It's really not hard for a reasonably intelligent person to understand - SP2 replaces windows system files with new versions

              • Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)

                by Anonymous Brave Guy ( 457657 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @10:10AM (#10830167)

                OK, now please breathe deeply, step back, cut the implied ad hominem attacks, and think.

                The problem here is not the malware, unless a patch in SP2 is intended to remove that malware. The malware is, well, "mal", but it was before anyway. The problem is that installing SP2 on many systems is making the situation worse. Please see my reply to the AC, and note the trivial steps that could be taken to fix most of the mess in the situation you guys are describing. Also consider that if installing SP2 results in more downtime than all the security flaws in recent history, as has been the case for many of the people I know who've been brave enough to try it, maybe that's not progress.

                Then you might like to check the numerous tales of woe from technically competent people whose systems were swept for the usual gremlins before the install, but who still had their OS taken out. Blaming the mess entirely on malware is a cop-out, unless you consider installing the only drivers available for numerous hardware devices, which worked fine prior to SP2, to be installing malware on your system.

          • There was no spyware on it. The script errors were possibly due to Norton.
    • SP2 was meant to take a working system and secure it beyond the normal level of security.

      If IE or any part of the system was borked, you should have run a virus scan, spyware scan, and troubleshot the problem before slapping SP2 on.

      Never assume a security update can solve already existing errors within the operating system. SP2 is not to blame here, refusal to solve the problems before upgrading the system is on your side.
      • i fix a *lot* of machines for people, and if you get a spyware-ridden box, clean up as best you can with adaware and spybot search and destroy and then whack SP2 over the top. out of about 20 boxes, it's fixed all of them so far...
        • I'm glad it did work for you. But it certainly isn't something recommended nor encouraged merely because it's a risk. This is a large reason why so many people have a bad opinion about SP and I have had very little with my customers. SP2 done properly very very rarely causes a problem, so long as the system is clean and for the most part bugfree.

          Too many variables to slap on a huge system upgrade when holes and bugs could exist in things the user did, and thus not something an sp2 could fix. Don't rely on
          • ...this should be done as a last resort. usually just before you're preparing to nuke the box and start again. just making the point that it often *does* fix stuff, although as you say there's no subsitute for backing up and doin it properly.
      • Never assume a security update can solve already existing errors within the operating system.
        But it shouldn't *ever* leave the system unbootable. That's just irrefutable. If SP2 scans the system, doesn't like what it sees and aborts the installation -- that would be acceptable, but to taking a working system (albeit infected with spyware) and leave it in an unbootable state, with no way to revert, is completely unacceptable behaviour.
      • > Never assume a security update can solve already existing errors within the operating system. SP2 is not to blame here, refusal to solve the problems before upgrading the system is on your side.

        Well, SP2 is also a service pack, which generally points at also including fixes.

        If the problem is the result of a bug in Windows (which is definitely not the only option, but one of the more likely options) then installing fixes is the only way to solve that problem, and the past decade has tought people that

    • I agree. (Score:3, Informative)

      by haeger ( 85819 )
      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 L

    • Re:SP2 is risky (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @07:32AM (#10828735) Journal
      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.

    • Re:SP2 is risky (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wolf31o2 ( 778801 )

      Actually, Windows is simply very volitile when it comes to upgrading to any service pack. No matter what service pack it is for what MS product, you always hear someone with a horror story about how upgrading to the new service pack totally destroyed their data, killed their cat, and phone in a bomb threat to the White House.

      While I am not discounting your first-hand experience, becuase it does truly happen, more than likely the culprit was some poorly-written anti-virus software, or some spyware/malware

    • Well, with all of the dubious horror stories being posted, I wanted to say that I put SP2 on 6 machines, and it worked seamlessly on all of them. Thrilled with the firewall, and the security thing even knows when my fairly obscure virus program (freeav.com) is a day out of date. I'm very impressed with XP SP2.
  • I work at a boarding school, and we're still trying to prevent it's spread, but I've had great luck with it. Just provided the Desktop staff with slipstreamed install CDs which we have begun using. The small cost of having to disable the firewall (causes more support trouble than it's worth) is a small price to pay to save up to an hour downloading windows updates.

    Eventually we're all going to HAVE to upgrade, MS isn't going to support SP1a forever. May as well do it now, if your apps run (don't have any t
    • use the corporate tool to either disable windows update, or better pull patches from your own patch server. use the qchain utility to automate patching. script installs of patches and run in the logon script, removing any unneccessary reboots. consider the use of an app like symantec personal firewall.

    • Eventually we're all going to HAVE to upgrade, MS isn't going to support SP1a forever.

      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

  • My experience? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Paska ( 801395 ) * on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @06:53AM (#10828544) Homepage
    My experience?

    Since installing it on my brother's computer, my Mum and Dad's c computer. I've found myself having more time to watch TV, then trying to rid their computers of adaware and trying to explain to them why hundreds of screens pop up all the time.

    I am not a Windows fan by any lengths, but hey. It's saved me some hassles so I am a happy camper.

  • I demand a mis trial (Score:2, Informative)

    by Schwing84 ( 782710 )
    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.
    • You did not read the EULA did you? Since you installed it, M$ has no responsibility whatsoever when it comes to what breaks or does not work as expected. Be informed. Cb..

  • A Simple Plea (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @06:54AM (#10828549)
    My Fellow /.'ers

    Please keep the Service Pack 2 shot my mother and buggered my dog posts to a minimum.

    Thanks,

  • problems (Score:5, Informative)

    by rayde ( 738949 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @06:56AM (#10828562) Homepage
    i've had loads of trouble... namely

    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. :-\

    • ...that other people apply it to.
      what does this tell you?

      • Re:and they don't for the millions of machines (Score:4, Informative)

        by ionpro ( 34327 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @09:38AM (#10829774) Homepage
        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.
    • Google [google.com] on "xp search broken" and feel lucky...

      Justin.

  • Did not RTFA... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mirko ( 198274 )
    But if IIRC, this SP adds a popup killer, and a personal software firewall (and some bugfixes along with side effects).
    So I understand the reason why most of the big Swiss companiesI am working with decided to stay on Windows 2000 (with ActiveX and VBScript deactivated).
    • They're pretty silly if they thought security was better on a 2K box than on an XP box... We had a worm infection at work, and all our 2000 boxes were hit. All our XP/2003 boxes were untouched. I think you'll find your swiss friends don't want to shell out the tens of thousands for new licenses ;)
  • Yeah, the default firewall and other security stuff is pretty nice. Doesn't make much of a difference to me or the amount of crap I find on my clients' computers, though. My favorite aspect of SP2 is the new wifi management app. I used to constantly have random 802.11x connectivity problems, as did many other Windows users. I'd just occasionally get dropped and have to repair the connection. Irritating. But... SP2 fixed it! Yay! Anyone else see this behaviour? -Yoweigh
    • 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 slipstre
    • My favorite new feature in SP2 is the WiFi interface. I can now tell Windows to ignore my neighbor's unsecured network (although it's tempting to hop on when I think they're on vacation).

      The popup killer is also better than the one I was using previously.

      I'll give SP2 one thumb up.

  • ... on a friend's PC, I guess it has something to do with a limit on the number of open connections a process can have.
    as for me, I have a hardware firewall thank you very much.
  • Every now and then I get a bluescreen (never got one with SP1a), and I've been getting video driver crashes when playing games (although I'm suspecting heat, and it's a laptop, so forget upping the cooling). Other than that, it's been great.

    It's a Dell Inspiron 1100.

  • things were just suddenly working (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sai Babu ( 827212 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @07:03AM (#10828597) Homepage

    "After spending an hour on the phone with Microsoft's India-based support team, I resolved the problem. Unfortunately, I never figured out the cause or the fix; things were just suddenly working."

    HE resolved the problem without knowing the cause or what he did! WOWSA, it's like magic DOODZ! Better grab this guy for your support team, he's worth his weight in gold!

    MS Hint: When speaking to Indian based MS support, for best results, hop up and down three times on left leg. Please contact support if leg is inoperative, leg is missing, or gravitational challange is experienced. A patch will be provided.

  • The jury has been good, but mixed. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Threni ( 635302 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @07:04AM (#10828601)
    What does that mean? The people who are judging the product consists of white and black males and females,with some straight, gay, disabled etc representatives?

    Or do they mean that the verdict was good, but mixed. Which means...mixed, and not good.

    It looks like the grammar and spelling of the articles posted here are being dumbed down to the level of most of the comments!
  • You windows users go back for doing what ever windows does best. [slashdot.org]
  • ...is they can't use a spell checker.

  • I think it's very simple (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @07:14AM (#10828646) Homepage Journal
    I think the situation is very simple.

    SP2 improves security. This is Good.

    Some applications rely on insecure functionality. This is Bad.

    SP2 breaks some of these applications. If this affects you, you will need to find different applications before you install SP2, or secure your system in a different way.

    The upshot is that Real operating systems and applications are not affected by this.
    • Some applications rely on insecure functionality. This is Bad.

      SP2 breaks some of these applications. If this affects you, you will need to find different applications before you install SP2, or secure your system in a different way.

      While it is easy to say that, in practice, it's not that simple. At home I have no real issues with SP2. At work though, my company has many issues with it. SP2 breaks many custom applications that we use, and I think many other businesses are in the same situation. In ou

      • Re:I think it's very simple (Score:4, Interesting)

        by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @09:06AM (#10829398) Homepage Journal
        ``SP2 breaks many custom applications that we use, and I think many other businesses are in the same situation.''

        They are there because of their own choices, though. They went with an operating system whose APIs had not been exposed to the test of a networked world. Now it turns out these APIs did not withstand that test. It's a risk they took, and now they have to pay the price. Supposedly they saved money back in the day by choosing Windows over UNIX, so it's not all that bad.
  • No shiny SP2 for us. We just got to do with patches now and then. Bah.

    Oh I do got my windows game machine but that is windows 2003 (it ain't xp wich is why it is better).

    No SP2 for that either then again it is firewalled with a proper firewall and only runs games. Nothing else.

    Intresting eh? Considering MS own figures on XP takeup this is not all that rare. Many many people are still on w2k or 98. Until recently for home use their was no reason to upgrade. I think only Star Wars Battlefront claimed to re

  • Security center popup lots of warnings, and thus gives you the feel you are safe if you have antivirus and updates and firewall. But users still have to understand that if they open an .exe/.scr file from mail this is unsafe.

    It does not detect my (kerio 2.15) firewall. (and running 2 firewalls makes the system less secure than running 1!). Was this so hard?
    It did not detect my norton antivirus.
    What updates? I want uptime, not updates! The new settings for updates rebooted my computer once without me at th
  • On one PC that I use, SP2 worked fine and enabled access to it via a VNC server. On another, getting SP2 to allow VNC was a complete nightmare, despite disabling firewall, installing another firewall, trying many different VNC variants, disabling multiple concurrent logins, and so on. In the end I reverted to SP1, but I'm still not sure exactly what made VNC start working again. VNC was working perfectly on my mother's Windows NT previously, so it wasn't ISP firewalling.

    Has anyone else had problems or s
  • It also shows MS took some good precationary steps with it, as some recent vulnerbalities that have surfaced doesn't apply to Windows XP SP2. Can't really say much else about it, no crashes, no bugs, no annoyances besides a bit more agressive Windows Update, but I suppose that's necessary when stupid users don't get it. :-P

    I use Kerio's firewall instead of Microsoft's (which should really have controls for outgoing traffic) and Firefox instead of IE so these are unused and can't really comment about them.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Installed it on my 2 computers at home, no problems and no indication. Since I already have firewalls, the sp2 one was turned off the first thing.
    At work we have had 2 problems on home computers, had a few others but that was because they already were running a firewall and left the SP2 on one, disable that it started working. The first one could not get links to work anymore using outlook express and internet explorer(no firefox comments). The other was a problem with a power outage in the middle of
  • 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.

  • No Problems on 3 Machines, But No Real Change (Score:3, Informative)

    by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @08:00AM (#10828870) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • Regardless of how effective some of the features are, Microsoft is labeling SP2 as a security-related bundled patch. Out of their Top 10 Reasons to Install XP [microsoft.com], six are clearly mentioned as being there to improve security.

    IIRC, wasn't SP2 first mentioned when their new Trustworthy Computing initiative was announced?

  • Let's see... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MikShapi ( 681808 ) * on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @08:52AM (#10829251) Journal
    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.
  • Whatever about security flaws and errors introduced in SP2, it accommplpished one thing very well. It makes users more security conscious

    The XP SP2 security center is the greatest thing to come out of Redmond since the start button. it forces users, through alerts to be aware of the vunerabilities of their own system. if they are without Antivirus, Firewall or automatic update, it tells them, and keeps telling them, until they fix the problem. This alone has saved me countless hours of explaining why security is important to people who just don't give a shit. For some bizarre reason, lecture after lecture from a techie on security will result in a user who still installs spyware ridden file sharers and smileys, browses on IE and won't install a simple antivirus, and who thinks your being paranoid. And yet a simple taskbar bubble proclaiming 'Your computer may be at risk' grabs and holds their attendion, to the extent that they actually do secure their PC(In as much as a windows PC can be secured).
    Security Center Rocks!
    Time for a Gnome Version methinks.

    P.S.
    BITS is also a lifesaver! Now at least when little annie stops downloading MP3's for 5 minutes, updates will actually be downloaded.
    P.P.S.
    Remember to set the install time for the updates when you fix computers for friends and family. I find 0600 is good. Everyone is in bed, so no panic results when the installer dialog pops up. Of course the computer must be on 24/7 , but just tell them that turning it on and off too much will break it.

  • SP2 is good for lusers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mydigitalself ( 472203 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @09:36AM (#10829752)
    Some really good things about SP2 and security that people like my mother would benefit from:

    1) Application warnings
    In a similar way to some adware programs (such as WinPatrol), SP2 warns when new applications are trying to add themselves to your startup and gives quite a good explanation as to what is going on.

    It also warns if applications are trying to contact the internet like some of those personal firewall things.

    2) Internet security warnings
    You know those dialogs "This is a really complex technical thing about running ActiveX controls and you know nothing about them, hey, so just click Yes or press Enter because that's what we've decided to default this dialog to". Well those are now quite different. The Action button to say yes is actually disabled for about 5 seconds or so to encourage reading of the dialog (and its better worded) and they also don't default to evil actions.

    A few other things I like:
    * They've hidden all of those pesky updates from Add/Remove programs, you can turn them on with a checkbox. My Add/Remove was becoming ridiculously long with all the automatic update patches showing up as installed applications.
    * Much improved Wireless networking capabilities. Made it user friendly enough for lusers to understand and configure without impacting on advanced capabilities.

    I haven't had any major problems as some others seem to have had (and neither have the 100 odd people in my company who have also updated), so I can't comment on that. All I can say is that I've updated certain "stuff" on my linux boxes before that has broken other things, so lets not get overly critical about one or two teething problems.

    As much as I hate to admit this, I think that MS have actually done quite a good job with SP2.

  • "official" Blue Tooth support.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cowmix ( 10566 ) <mmarchNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday November 16, 2004 @10:01AM (#10830045) Homepage
    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.

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