SP2

[Yrrek]

Linky

Ok, I have read the overview, and critiques in the papers, and the feature listing, but I do not see any good reason to download this Service Pack. Am I missing something? Are there any benefits? Because it looks like it will be more annoying than it will help. I don't want *any* of those "features." I hope I am not just missing something. Opinions?

[Urza-DSF]

Eh, other than the security center and the fact that the windows firewall isnt hidden any more...no real changes in performance over here. I'm just the type of person who always needs to have the latest update for whatever program/system I'm using.

[Griselda]

At work, tech services emailed everybody and asked them *not* to install the service pack on work computers, because it would break something-or-other. That didn't seem like a good sign (usually they're emailing everyone begging them to patch windows so that they don't spread viruses).

[Hocus]

Avoid it like the plague.

[Archon_Wing]

Heard of major complications from quite a few people. I generally wouldn't install anything from MS on its first release. :)

[DeeBye]

I installed it. It was a painless procedure.

[LavCat]

I also installed SP2 without major problems. I think they still have things to fix however.

[yangman]

My mother's devil of a laptop refuses to accept SP2.

Every attempt I make to force it to auto-update, it will crash installing the "update manager" like clockwork.

Fortuantely, the machine I work on runs win2k.

One more reason for me to migrate semi-completely to Linux.

[JustAGuy]

My brother installed it and was getting poor download speeds via BitTorrent. He then uninstalled the SP2, and his downloads began flying (like mine do on the same bandwidth, my machine without SP2 installed).

According to this little gem, Microsoft modified tcpip.sys to disallow more than 10 failed open socket connections on any one port, pushing any further connections into a queue. Give me a break. This effectively destroys peer-to-peer. Intended? I would imagine so.

SP2, for now, is out of the question.

[LochnarITB]

because it would break something-or-other.

I installed SP2. It made me appreciate one feature of XP - system restore! I normally don't use system restore for most installs but knew that this was too big not too. After waiting out the installation and then dealing with all the default settings imposed by the new system and security center, I quickly found a piece of software that broke. Surprise of all surprises (not!), it was their own software - Works, the word processor. That is my office suite on this machine. When I tried opening an existing or a new document, it complained about a file being either missing or moved (of course, it didn't bother telling me which files were missing). I checked the directories I could think of and found all the same files (compared to one of several backups). I searched the internet and found no solution. I didn't bother to look for other broken software, I just went to the restore point. After waiting through the restore (which left a bunch of files/dirs to be cleaned out later), the same files opened without question. Oh well, no SP2 on this machine, at least in the near future.

[Taem]

I haven't installed it and I don't plan on it either, but I don't know how to get rid of that blasted NEW UPDATES ARE READY TO INSTALL icon in my Nav bar!!! Super annoying!

When I have NIS 2004, even thou it’s not the best, I trust it to protect my computer! Why should I download something I know will probably cause conflicts or problems? So far, I know 10 people who have personally downloaded it and out of those ten, 3 had to rollback their systems while 4 others wish they hadn't installed it for various reasons (slowness on computer, trouble with internet, etc.). The other 3 people had no problems, but had mainly gaming machines.

[Yrrek]

As to your New Update annoyances, I turned off the auto-update. I don't remember where exactly, but I'm pretty sure it is in the control panel (I keep mine in classic-mode). I'll look and see if I can find it.

EDIT: Found it, Start-->Settings-->Control Panel-->System-->Automatic Update-->Turn off automatic update (this is a radio button).

[Taem]

Thanks for the idea! :) Only trouble is if I do that, I'll miss out on the other "critical" updates because I almost never check Microshafts site unless I need some component (such as VMP 9). Will I still get Word updates if I shut off the auto-updates? I wonder...

[Yrrek]

No, you would have to check the site on your own, but one of the other radio buttons was "Alert me when new updates are available", unless I'm mistaken.

[Yrrek]

Alright, as of now, I will NOT be installing SP2. It seems to me to be more of a hassle than a help. Thank you all for you input! :)

[Taeme]

Unless you want to use an ATi video card ...


I personally would go with Hocus' opinion, as frankly, I hear nothing all that good about it. My friend who works in the business is frightened of it, since it changes certain settings that make windows act a little less secure in some cases. Wait a month or two til they've got all the bugs ironed out, then get it.

And when I say "get it" I mean start over from scratch and slipstream a copy. NOTHING is ever as good upgraded as fresh installed.

[Archon_Wing]

Although when it comes to computers, people tend to not follow that.

Anyhow, there are a host of people out there who are not computer savvy. For example, they might not have a firewall and have security settings set to low. It will benifit those folks. For the rest, it's nothing critical.

[Zippyy]

I've had SP2 installed on both my desktop and laptop since the corporate version (the one for network admins, I don't remember exactly what they called it) was released, and I haven't had any problems. The only difference I've noticed is that Pest Patrol and Ad-aware rarely find any spyware. Before SP2 they would find maybe 4-6 pieces a day. I don't know if SP2 is connected with this (I haven't read the SP2 update list) or if it was just a coincidence.

[Kevin]

Well being at a University that was rolling it out before it was publically available thanks to some phone calls, and being the Tier 2 support who gets to work directly with most of the students I can say a fair bit about it.

I have been running it on my work machine for at least 3 weeks now. Our package for work systems disable the firewall and roll back the Kerberos API so that it doesn't break our domain logins. We have found that there are some issues with having a roaming profile on an AFS drive and using the openAFS 1.2.9b client for access to that. The main issue is that after hitting a secure site the profile redirection for Favorites in IE breaks. If you aren't redirecting the Favorites we haven't seen any issues with IE. This is actually an issue with the older OpenAFS client we use for other compatibility reasons. The Kerberos issues are because we don't use an MS Kerberos controller prefering the more stable *nix based ones.

On a standard install (i.e. student machines) we have about 70% success rate for install. The big problem systems are generally laptops, not really surprising considering the higher percentage of proprietary hardware in those. Most people have no problems with it. Norton Internet Security does seem to reset itself after the SP2 install though so that you have to go through and redo the program scan so that things can get out to the internet, but not a big deal. For most of the students no problems. Some reports of sluggish systems after an install. A reinstall of the SP has generally fixed those. We are often turning off the File and Print sharing blocking that is on by default in the built in firewall though.

The huge benefit for us and the reason we started to apply it to systems so early is all the security patches are rolled up in it. The slow down in spread of virus has been tremedous on the resnet (student residential housing subnet) thanks to SP2 installs. Considering I found the newest strain of sdbot on Monday (thank you sysinternals) on an unpatched student system (McAfee should have the extra.dat for cleaning it rolled into the next sdat release, should be tomorrow or maybe it came out today, today was a long day) I'm very grateful for the ease of getting the security roll-ups installed. Though it was neat sending a file to McAfee and Symantec (though we are a McAfee campus) and having them go, hmm we've never seen that before, we'll get back to you, I would rather not have to do that everyday. It took them both about an hour to say that they had something that should clean it. I've tested the McAfee update it worked. But again, getting the systems up to date so that they can't get hit in the first place is what I care about.

That being said, I haven't installed it at home yet because of some old legacy hardware I have and problems I had with it after installing SP1 on the system. Considering that I am using drivers from Windows 2000 for the old SCSI card I keep dragging along with me to run the old CD-RW and CD-ROM that I have, I don't feel like wedging those back in again like I had to after the SP1 update.

If you've been keeping your system up to date and it isn't running in a network environment where it can cause problems (say a university network) then I would wait till SP2a before updating, though I doubt most of you would have any problems. If you haven't been patching, then I would suggest putting it on just to get the security roll-ups. If you have a prebuilt system (Dell, Gateway, Compaq) you are less likely to have any issues than if you have a custom built system since more testing was done on those standard system configs. It isn't the plague or anything. It can be unistalled (I have done so several times without using rollback, just using its unistall feature), and I have only seen once case out of literally over 1000 where the system was rendered unbootable by it, and that was on a highly modified laptop system. But since all the data on that system had been backed up a re-install was doable.

Just some of my thoughts on the matter.

[Yrrek]

Yes, I have a custom built system, and a few of the drivers for my hardware devices haven't been signed by Microsoft, I won't chance it. Thank you though for the in-depth review!