XP Service Pack 2

danzaland · Post by **danzaland** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 5:49 am

We got an email from the company IT dept telling us to not install SP2 and even gave us a blocker for it. My question is how will this affect the home user? DO I want to install it on my home machines? I see it has been said it will affect atleast 1 in 10 applications. What applications, how, and what about non-legit programs? Are there hardware problams too?

chris · Post by **chris** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 6:04 am

I never, EVER install any major updates for at least the first week after it's been released (and that includes Macintosh updates as well). You need to sit back and see what kind of incompatibilities show up.

danzaland · Post by **danzaland** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 8:14 am

That's a good call, and I even spoke to one of the better IT guys and he said he would NOT personally install it on his own machines. I am still interested in hearing what problems people hear or personally see with this service pack so keep this thread going.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 10:23 am

danzaland wrote:That's a good call, and I even spoke to one of the better IT guys and he said he would NOT personally install it on his own machines. I am still interested in hearing what problems people hear or personally see with this service pack so keep this thread going.

Haven't got a list of problems with it, but IBM had a mandate that they didn't want anyone throwing it on their system, either.

I'm interested in solving issues where my PC could be at stake, and Windows usually includes those as "critical updates." Defenses against worms and so forth. Otherwise, my systems are working great, and it would be a huge hassle for the nonsense normally thrown into a Microsoft service pack right now. You have to seriously ask yourself if you want to take the time to roll back if it becomes necessary.

There was one update (that was hidden in Internet Explorer) that made your system pause for 10-12 seconds if you told it to delete several hundred files at once. Well, I was moving crap around on my drive (MP3s or something) -- I had several hundred files to delete (well, move, but still) and encountered the bug. What a mess!

I get about two hours at night to dork around with my PC, and lately it's been used to play Doom 3. To take that time and instead try to fix crap (if Service Pack II is faulty) would be significantly below average.

danzaland · Post by **danzaland** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 11:15 am

Some things I have read have said that it has blue screened a machien and just totally deleted SP1, made it impossible to Rollback anything and blown out a video card where it was neccesary to go to the video card site and get the drivers again and completely re-install it.

Is there a fix for the file delay bug you mentioned?

chris · Post by **chris** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 11:52 am

danzaland wrote:Some things I have read have said that it has blue screened a machien and just totally deleted SP1, made it impossible to Rollback anything and blown out a video card where it was neccesary to go to the video card site and get the drivers again and completely re-install it.

There are always going to be some people who have problems with ANY update. Aside from the obligatory driver incompatiblity that Microsoft may have missed when "beta testing" (har har har) their service pack, computers that were screwed up to begin with will get trashed when SP2 gets installed.

The key is to read the news sites and look for COMMON problems with an update. If I don't see those appearing, then I feel that an update is safe to install. Oh, and *always* do a full backup of your computer before installing any major updates. Pick up a cheap 2nd hard drive and a copy of Ghost....the few dollars you spend are MORE than worth it if the update kills your machine.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 11:54 am

There wasn't a fix that I knew of for the large number of files thing. I just quit putting as many files into a directory as I did before. THANKS, BILL!

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 3:30 am

I just got this machine running the way I want, theres NO way I'm gonna throw something in here that I proboably don't need. I could see getting it if there were problems that neeed to be addressed but wasn't SP1 released for that?

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AARDVARK