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Windows Operating Systems Bug Security Software IT

Ready or Not, Here comes Windows XP SP2 580

Posted by timothy from the peek-a-boo dept.
TheViffer writes "Beginning April 12, 2005 Microsoft will remove all temporary blocking of Windows XP SP2 by automatic update and Windows update which it has granted to those organizations that requested it. So unless you run Software Update Service (SUS), chances are you will get a mix of SP1 and SP2 running at the same time. Let's just hope you have these programs that are known to experience a loss of functionality when they run on a Windows XP Service Pack 2-based computer and these programs that seem to stop working after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2 patched, upgraded, or removed. Might be a good time for help desk personal to pencil in a week (or two) of vacation."
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Ready or Not, Here comes Windows XP SP2 More

Ready or Not, Here comes Windows XP SP2

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  • Never mind the fact.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MSFanBoi ( 695480 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:50AM (#11736157) Journal
    That nearly all the programs on that list are very old, or already have updates for SP2. Hey what the hell, it's Microsof so lets bash them anyways. Sp2 does a LOT of good things for the average Joe in protecting him from his own stupidity.

    • Re:Never mind the fact.... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      More to the point, the two KBs linked are:

      1. program breaks because it executes code in a data segment (i.e. broken, article tells you how to turn of no-execute protection)
      2. program needs ports opening on firewall (i.e. you need to learn to admin your firewall)

    • Re:Never mind the fact.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jacksonj04 ( 800021 ) <nick@nickjackson.me> on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:05AM (#11736331) Homepage
      Looks like moderators are on form today.

      This is absolutely my argument. If applications use shortcuts which are blocked the instant security is applied, more fool the programmers. There are documented ways to do things, if you use shortcuts then don't blame the OS vendor when those shortcuts are locked down.

    • Re:Never mind the fact.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SunFan ( 845761 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:30AM (#11736560)

      SP2 is better, that really isn't a point of argument. The only thing that nags at me is why Microsoft didn't do this ten or so years ago, when home users were beginning to connect to the Internet in large numbers. It isn't like stack protection is new technology, nor is having basic firewall functionality available. These two things are probably among the easiest things to implement security-wise, with many examples to follow. If Microsoft had moved the Outlook Express "File Attachments Convenience Team" over to the "Basic Firewall Team" they would have saved themselves a ton of grief.

      • Re:Never mind the fact.... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @12:41PM (#11737162) Homepage
        SP2 is better, that really isn't a point of argument. The only thing that nags at me is why Microsoft didn't do this ten or so years ago, when home users were beginning to connect to the Internet in large numbers. It isn't like stack protection is new technology, nor is having basic firewall functionality available.

        Until the Windows 98-XP transition was completed there was no point. There is no way to make Win 98 secure, too much support for legacy systems. Sure you could do a firewall, but it would be too easy for a trojan to disable it. I don't think the stack protection scheme would work in Win-98.

        We waited ten years for Apple to get its act together and finaly release OS-X and give us basic memory protection.

        The hold up here is because there are a bunch of corporate IT departments who have not got arround to making XP SP2 deployment a priority which in turn is because many of them have a small number of apps that are not SP2 compliant.

        All I use my machine for is Office, IE and Visual Studio. But I have to wait until they have checked out several hundred Oracle, Clarify etc. apps.

    • Scientific software is disproportionally affected (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tetromino ( 807969 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:40AM (#11736641)
      One of my relatives works in a biochemical research lab. All of their computers are WinXP Sp1 because Sp2 basically broke every single program and driver they relied on for their daily calculations, data acquisition, and analysis (some of the software is commercial, and some was custom-written by people who are currently residing in Eastern Europe and Brazil). Naturally, every worm outbreak hits them hard -- but they think it's worth it to clean up a worm once every couple of months rather than struggle with their bread-and-butter programs locking up on Sp2.

      Sp2 is great for the average Joe who uses his box for email and pr0n, but if you are using your computer as a scientific instrument, then installing Sp2 changes (and breaks) too many things.

      (In case you are wondering, the reason they don't switch to Linux is that some of their data acquisition hardware doesn't have good Linux drivers)

      • Re:Scientific software is disproportionally affect (Score:5, Informative)

        by LurkerXXX ( 667952 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @12:41PM (#11737164)
        If SP2 is breaking stuff, 99% of the time is because it's trying to use some network port that is now blocked with the firewall. Just sniff the traffic going in/out of one of the SP1 boxes, see what ports the apps seems to require, then open those ports after installing SP2 (or turning on the firwall in SP1)
      • (In case you are wondering, the reason they don't switch to Linux is that some of their data acquisition hardware doesn't have good Linux drivers)

        Or mac drivers. Which sometimes drives me crazy. I work in a lab, too, and we have an image processing package which we use to make 3D anaglyphs from Z-series data acquired by a confocal optical microscope. A rep from Apple told me that they have tried to get the programmers to make a Mac OS X version of the package, and the programmers keep refusing, even thoug
      • Err... Perhaps you should advise your relative to suggest to HR to hire some competent admins. They can effectively seal the computers they use in their work from access from the outside world. All it takes is a protocol to communicate the results to the outside. Put a firewall in front of all those computers (preferably one that does NAT and protocol analysis), close every single port and protocol, then open only the one that passes the data through.

        Then they wouldn't even need to patch those computers.

        T
    • The second list, which is marked as a list of applications that don't work after installing SP2, is actually a list of applications that need ports opened for them. This is not terribly surprising, and would need to be done for any firewall that people had installed.

      While I can understand how a sysadmin looking at the prospect of 100 or 10,000 computers possibly going kaputz is scary... get some perspective. It's not like the system is upgrading to a different OS, it's just adding a firewall and a few ot

  • They don't deserve vacation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:50AM (#11736159)
    They've had plenty of time to complete any migration. The application issues have been known for enough time, that if this is still an issue, they've been slacking off for too long.

  • SP2 is actually a good thing. (Score:5, Informative)

    by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:50AM (#11736162)
    I know that it breaks some programs and has caused some people problems, but the alternative of ridiculously insecure Windows boxes running rampant is worse.

    I've been running Windows XP SP2 on all of my computers (which admittedly is a small population of 3) with no problems. The built-in popup blocker is more rigorous than anything else I've seen and itself breaks many things (most amusingly Outlook Access for Web), but for the most part is plays fairly nice.
    • On the other hand, SP2 does not solve many problems with security as [slashdot.org] seen [slashdot.org] here [slashdot.org]. Yet it can potentially break critical applications.

  • At least this time (Score:5, Informative)

    by 2names ( 531755 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:50AM (#11736163)
    we have a list we can refer to. So many times in the past it was just a "try it and see" situation.

  • A Good Thing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Skuggamara ( 853341 ) * on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:51AM (#11736172)
    In my humble opinion, this is a good thing. I run a decent sized IT shop, and I feel that not upgrading to SP2 is akin to connecting your computer/network to the internet without a firewall.

    • Re:A Good Thing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:59AM (#11736265)
      Let's see if they can break my unfirewalled VMS or Twenex (TOPS-20) system ;))

      I would like to believe that any intelligent system shouldn't need firewalls.

    • Re:A Good Thing (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:04AM (#11736318) Homepage
      SP2 comes with a firewall..? :) (They might call it a firewall, but a lot of home users will be surprised when they use subnet for file-sharing and open it up to a 255.255.255.0 on their ISP. And the lack of egress blocking is bad when all MS software wants to talk to the Internet.) "Better than nothing" isn't much of a selling point, except for very small values of nothing.

      • Re:A Good Thing (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Caiwyn ( 120510 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @12:05PM (#11736851)

        "Better than nothing" isn't much of a selling point, except for very small values of nothing.

        That's bull. "Better than nothing" is the only selling point, for any application. A Cisco PIX firewall isn't perfect, either, but it's better than nothing. The entire issue at hand is the fact that most Windows users are clueless enough to be connected to the internet without any sort of firewall protection. SP2 will install a firewall that by default blocks all incoming new connections, which is what you want a firewall to do in almost all general cases. "Better than nothing," particularly in this instance, is a huge leap from "nothing." Compatibility be damned, I say it's nice to see Microsoft making a decision to break compatibility for the sake of security, for once.

  • Last Post! (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtomicSnarl ( 549626 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:51AM (#11736173) Homepage
    I'm going to upgrade XP now.... ummm....

  • Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by eznihm ( 552487 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:52AM (#11736181)
    No need for a vacation inept geeks, you can turn off Automatic Updates with group policy and you can block the windowsupdate.com site at the firewall. That is, if you *really* don't want SP2.. which IMHO seems to be (relatively!) quite stable and secure.

  • Why SP2 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Beetjebrak ( 545819 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:52AM (#11736182) Homepage
    What does SP2 seriously add to the corporate desktop? Admittedly I haven't been in charge of windows desktops since Win2K, but I can't immediately see any advantage. Only support nightmares concerning the builtin firewall. Is a personal firewall really needed on every secretary's desk? I would hope not... they're not supposed to run any unauthorized services other than those required for remote control/remote software deployment.

    • Re:Why SP2 (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Ya but what about a next gen MSBLAST that a simple firewall can provent? Not to mention the pop-up blocker that can seriously help productivity. All in all this is the first thing I do to peoples computers when I get them. It only has benefits for the average user.

    • Re:Why SP2 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by smash ( 1351 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:06AM (#11736336) Homepage Journal
      I'd say a desktop firewall is still a good idea.

      Scenario: Manager takes his laptop home on the weekend, or (even better), takes it on a business trip, and plugs into the wireless lan at the airport.

      He picks up a copy of MyDoom version super alpha turbo+.

      2 days later, he gets back and plugs it into the corporate network in your office.

      How many of you can say that *every* windows machine you have on the corporate network is up to date? Thats assuming there's already a patch for Mydoom version supera alpha turbo+ at that point?

      The days of the perimeter firewall being all you need are well and truly over (and some would say they were never apparent anyway).

      smash.

  • Don't use windows firewall, update your software (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zed2K ( 313037 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:53AM (#11736193)
    How many of those programs in the list are either old versions, have been updated for awhile now, or can be fixed by just disabling windows firewall?

    I bet the majority of them.

    I'm still waiting for a slashdot post to strike fear into the hearts of everyone about the end of the world being near.

  • "help desk personal" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:53AM (#11736202)
    I am looking for a SWM that can keep his call times down to 5 minutes.
  • I'm not sure what language the second half of the submission is in, but Babelfish isn't helping. Can somebody provide a translation?
  • So, what about all the folks that have the FCKGW license key for their Windows installations? I know many people who still have that code in their windows setups.

    I know there is a procedure that can change the installation key, but it is time consuming to go to each computer and reset the key. Plus, it may also break any shareware programs that use a hash of the license key for their registration/serial number check.

    My question is this - is this a plan to force everyone who has a - ummm how can I put this

    • Re:Ulterior motives? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by His name cannot be s ( 16831 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:13AM (#11736414) Journal
      You know, I'm not sure that this is a plan to force all pirated-key windows users to do anything.

      You are very correct that Piracy has made microsoft what it is today--That being said, one can never allow piracy to continue unchecked and rampant. It needs to be chased down everywhere it can be. By making it as difficult as they can, casual pirates will be forced to either a) cough up the dough, or b) move to a platform that copying is not piracy (linux/bsd/etc...)

      I think that it is in everyone's best interests to really evaluate their dependance on unlicensed software. The slashdot crowd goes bloody balistic any time any one violates the GPL by shipping a GPL derrived product without access to the source. They however seem to have a soft spot for violations of Microsoft's (et al) copyrights.. Odd bunch.

      Back to your point tho' ... while the casual home pirates are not actually activly pirating MS's software, they strengthen MS--by making Windows the defacto standard... The Far-east street vendors of pirated software are not building microsoft's empire, they actually shrink it by removing people who would actually pay for their software from the pool.

  • I'm curious... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Xentax ( 201517 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:56AM (#11736223)
    Does anyone know if the appcompat system can be used to provide an XPsp1 (or earlier) environment *only* for apps that break in SP2?

    I'm asking both "if" it could be done, and whether it IS in fact an option if so.

    That seems like a better solution, IMHO, than holding off on upgrading to SP2 forever, if it could be made to work. Of course, I don't think there's any easy way to centrally deploy or manage appcompat stuff, either... :/

    Xentax
    • The apps that "break" are largely connected to the sudden introduction of a firewall into the mix. Normally, firewalls with statefull inspection do not interfere much with known programs because the connections are initiated from within/behind it. However, some programs sit and listen for incoming connections, and should be authorized to do so. Remote Desktop software, SMS software, etc can all wait for connections and, in an enterprise environment, this is good for remote administration. Having your admini
      • That sounds good, but I'm not buying that as a reason that it's STILL too soon to go to SP2.

        Group Policy will let you disable that "poorly-configured-and-superfluous-in-our-environ m ent" personal firewall. So, you install SP2, you reboot, and the GP turns it back off when you log in. Where's the problem?

        I agree that making an SP1 environment defeats the purpose of SP2. But *only for specific applications*. At least the rest of your system (say, the user's browsing experience) should still see the benefit

  • Ready or not, here comes the FUD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TrappedByMyself ( 861094 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:56AM (#11736226)
    Might be a good time for help desk personal to pencil in a week (or two) of vacation.

    Give it up people. I run at least a half dozen of the applications on those lists on a few XP machines with SP2, and have had exactly 0 problems.
    When will the "bashing Microsoft makes me feel good" trend end?
    • 1. I'm not bashing MS personally, i'm just not using it.

      2. It will exactly end at the same time when the "pointing-out-that-slashdot-bashes-ms" threads stop sucking up karma. When will people understand that these are two sides of the coin, where rationality is somewhere between, although it occurs exactly as often as you see a coin on it's edge.
    • Most likely when Microsoft will end.
    • I work for a dsl isp. Phone support for losers who think that upgrading to XP is the fix to all their problems, and then only when there's the slightest ember of awareness in their brain that maybe win98 is causing all of their problems.

      For me, SP2 is evil, no matter how you spin it. OSX users never have problems, I only maybe have to reset an email password for them once in awhile. PS2 users, if they have the correct numbers in, and it's not working, you know it's some sort of DSL issue. Routers, same thi

  • I don't understand this whole "service pack" thing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:56AM (#11736231)
    Seriously. On my side of the fence (OS X), we have Security Updates that are released as soon as possible after a hole is found. Then, we have major Updates (10.3.1, 10.3.2, etc). If you're more than one version behind, Software Update installs a combo updater (including all security updates), and you're good to go after one restart, no matter what version you're running. You're only exposed to the net for as long as it takes to download the package. What's so hard about that? Why this huge fuss over a difficult and long project to cram a huge-update-that-everyone-needs into one "service pack"?
    • Service packs are essentially considered new versions of windows. You pay for minor point updates to MacOS... 10.2, 10.3, et cetera. Windows users get a crappier OS but they get OS updates in the form of service packs that often add new functionality. Windows NT, for example, got DirectX in a service pack, making it possible to play Diablo :) XPSP2 includes some new security-related software, some of which works.
      • 10.2 to 10.3 was not a minor upgrade. (There's nothing minor about Expose, but if you're not using it it might look just like eye-candy. Also the speed improvements are amazing. There were also over a 100 other features which I can't recall.)

        10.3.4 to 10.3.5 is a minor upgrade, and you do get that for free.

        I use SP2 at work, and do like it. (And by "like" it, I mean I don't really like it, but it's better than SP1.)

  • Last time I installed SP2 on my laptop I got a BSOD everytime I unpluged it.

    Thank you micro$oft for rendering a laptop unusable.

    (Before everyone tells me to update drivers and whatnot, I updated all my drivers and still had problems, something to do with my processer...)

  • so? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Errtu76 ( 776778 )
    What's all the fuss about? If you don't want the SP2 update, turn off automatic update! And since everyone knows there's no excuse anymore to *not* run SP2, everybody will be happy.

    And by everybody, i mean not people reading slashdot.

  • Hey, now... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...OK, so Microsoft is not undeserving of the "knee jerk" flame they typically get on this forum.

    But the time here is pretty negative for something Microsoft did to help customers. They recognized a compatibility issue and gave their customers time to modify things before the heavy-handed automated updates broke them.

    Arguing "SP2 breaks things! Bad Microsoft!" isn't helpful either--SP2 closes a number of security holes, and we're all down on Microsoft about security holes, so they're in large part doing
  • I guess that some apps could be affected by the built-in system in SP2, preventing apps from opening a LISTENing port on your machine.
    I know that you can let a program be allowed to open a listening server, but I would like to ask to the /.ers:
    do you have tried using it with the common P2P apps and google desktop? Do they work?
    I'm worried to break something I regularly use....
    • Haven't tried google desktop, but the problem with P2P apps and SP2 is that SP2 sets a limit of 10 pending connection attempts per process, which would indeed mess around with some P2P apps. Fortunatly there is a fix [lvllord.de] (although not an official MS one, so either find one from a more trustworthy source or be careful!) that rectifies this problem. I assume it was done to attempt to slow down spam-bots, and hence no easy-to-change for users/the spambot registry entry.
  • When I finally succumbed to the annoying box on my screen that was insisting I install SP2, it broke my Windows installation so thoroughly that I had to reinstall Windows from scratch just to get things working again.

    If it was a couple of applications that didn't work, I could live with that. But in this case, the machine would hang in the middle of the windows flash screen on bootup, rendering the whole damned computer useless.

    Thats a day of my life I'll never get back. Unacceptable.
  • If you don't trust Windows Update to do anything right, I know I don't, you can use the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer [microsoft.com] to give you a list of what needs updating, and all the relevant information, so you can download the patches for yourself. I use this so I can keep copies of all the patches needed on my hard drive and can install them all without connecting to the internet.

    Another good way is to load up Nessus [nessus.org] and have a good crack at one of your windows boxes.
  • We still don't run it where I work because it breaks a few small (but frequently used) applications that were written in-house. Obviously these applications are not on the SP2 incompatability list, and I imagine we would find at least a couple more if we were to roll out SP2 on a large scale.

  • Might be a good time for help desk personal to pencil in a week (or two) of vacation.

    Shouldn't this be posted to www.slashdot.in?

  • I have tried several times to install XP SP2 on my girlfriend's laptop, but each time the laptop has rebooted once and then refused to boot again.

    Booting into safe mode has allowed me to uninstall SP2 and restore the machine to a usable condition. I don't mind SP2, I just don't want to spend the time troubleshooting a failed install.

    Even if Microsoft were to offer me free telephone support, it would still waste my time. It seems unfair to force users to accept upgrades that may very well cause their com
  • Any IT shop with more than 10 Windows boxes that isn't running SUS (or an equivalent 3rd party product) is guilty of dereliction of duty.

    SUS is free, easy to setup, and gives you complete control of which updates roll out, how often, etc. (It can be setup to automatically roll all updates out daily of course).

    Besides, SP2 is a good thing in terms of security.

  • SP2 Causes Problems with Microsoft's own Products (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ridgelift ( 228977 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:16AM (#11736436)
    Virtual PC - 2004 - Microsoft [microsoft.com]
    When you run a Windows XP SP2-based virtual machine, it will perform slowly compared to a Windows XP SP1-based virtual machine."

    Interesting that a Microsoft product has problem with their own Service Pack.

  • The Real Story (Score:5, Informative)

    by mslinux ( 570958 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:17AM (#11736448)
    SP2 will not automatically be installed. It will download automatically, but someone still has to accept the license agreement and manually install the service pack. There is nothing automatic about the install. Please stop spreading FUD about SP2!
  • This would be a good time to float a Linux LiveCD installer image on Kazaa/Grokster/Morpheus networks, filename "WinXP-SP2.Installer.iso". Maybe a custom distro that just collects the custom install data up front in a console, then clears the screen saying only "upgrading..." until it's done.

  • AU (Score:3, Informative)

    by jav1231 ( 539129 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:17AM (#11736453)
    What is more interesting is how long it takes to install. SP2 is HUGE! This will put off many. I still recommend it, though not for the firewall features. Personally, if you have broadband you should have a decent cable router with your ports closed. No this won't stop internally invited connections but it will do pretty much what the firewall feature is doing. It's a matter of staying up to date, which is essential in a Windows environment. Like it or not, SP2 should be installed. If you don't like it, seriously consider switching platforms. Yes it's frustrating, but we're in a mess. We have a dominant player on the desktop. Until Linux get's more up to speed on the desktop and/or Mac's gain some share this is what we have.

  • It might be a good time for helpdesk personell... (Score:3, Funny)

    by PsiPsiStar ( 95676 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:31AM (#11736575)
    to start using pencils.

  • Let me get this stright (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blanks ( 108019 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:37AM (#11736619) Homepage Journal
    1)People complain about windows security.

    2)Microsoft comes out with sp2 that has a built in firewall.

    3)People then complain that the firewall makes it so alot of other firewall/security applications don't work.

    4)Then they complain that things like FTP and IIS dont work....

    Yes there are many applications that should run on this list, but really people, alot of these applications stop working for very good reasons.

    FTP dosent work? configure your firewall. IIS dosent work, configure your firewall! Some of these programs stop working for a reason.

  • MS is doing the right thing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ztirffritz ( 754606 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:48AM (#11736714)
    I'm not an avid supporter of MS, but I believe that credit should be given when and where it is due. SP2 is a GOOD thing. Yes it breaks some things, but that is the price you pay for past mistakes. MS realized that they had 2 choices: 1) continue supporting a horribly flawed system 2) break the cycle, back up, fix the problems and start again. They made the daring choice to back up and start again. That is impressive for a company with a multibillion dollar product with 90% market share. It still isn't perfect, but I think that they know that. They're hoping that Longhorn will solve many of these problems. Maybe they're right, who knows though. At least they tried to help everyone out by fixing the product, giving people time to adopt and adapt, and are firm enough to stick to a schedule, knowing that the fix will only really help if EVERYONE is upgraded. KUDOS to MS. (Someone better take note of this moment, it may never happen again.)

  • How to make SP2 not suck (Score:4, Informative)

    by TetryonX ( 830121 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @01:20PM (#11737476)
    First of all, I have found that all the incompatibility comes from two realms: NX-bit protection and the new Windows Firewall. Both are easy to disable.

    NX (off): Edit your boot.ini by removing that /NoExecute=OptIn or /NoExecute line. (Go to System properties, Advanced tab. Startup and Recovery startup Settings button. and hit the edit button in the new window., it will open up your boot.ini file).

    Clear, simple, and every application will no longer flip out. + you'll get a boost in performance (I take a 10% performance hit when NX is on my laptop, far more visible in photoshop than any other application).

    Windows Firewall: First off, GET A BETTER FIREWALL! Next step, net stop sharedaccess and find it in your services (Start->run: services.msc) Disabled it.

    Horrah! Your windows should now perform in it's old SP1 ways. (I have yet to find any application to fail after these features were disabled). Oh yeah if you get annoyed by that Windows Security Center, in it's main window on the left side it has a way to change its notification (to completely off because nagging programs suck).

  • Ready or Not, Here comes Security (Score:3, Interesting)

    by suwain_2 ( 260792 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @03:07PM (#11738475) Journal
    I installed SP2 a couple months ago.

    I already ran my own (software) firewall that did both ingress and egress filtering, along with running Firefox as a web browser.

    SP2 hasn't done anything noticeable for me, except that the wireless network dialogs are a lot nicer.

    I'll admit that the firewall drove me nuts for a bit: it was always popping up, telling me it was doing me a favor by blocking legitimate traffic. I ended up turning it off, but only because I had my own firewall already.

    When I find myself using IE (infrequently), I do find that it'll now occasionally put a bar across the top informing me that it's barred various malware from installing itself. Between this and the firewall, SP2 is a very good thing for the average computer user, and is of little harm to those of us who already found something to do it.

  • Bias. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kiwioddBall ( 646813 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @03:29PM (#11738691)
    Who posts this c..p? Microsoft removing the block is the fact of the article, but the whole 'two weeks of vacation' thing just beings the quality of this website down. Editors should be ashamed.

  • How is this a problem (Score:3, Funny)

    by DarkMantle ( 784415 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @05:41PM (#11739740) Homepage
    the first program listed that it blocks is " AOL Toolbar version 1.13.2" isn't this a good thing?

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