Windows Service Pack 2

[Good Ol' Batmanuel!]

Well, after several hoaxes, high hopes, fake announcements, and whatever else you'd like to say, Service Pack 2 (http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/default.aspx) is finally officially here.

What I'd like to know is; do you think it's good right now, or will it be (or is it already proving to be) as buggy or initially pointless as many new releases from Microsoft are? I know it promises high security and blah blah blah, but is it really necessary at this early stage?

[krazymed]

Service Pack 1 wasn't pointless, it allowed XP to run on hard drives larger than 137 GB. Very useful. But as long as you have a firewall and don't use IE, you don't need Service Pack 2 right this minute.

[Magwheel]

I don't have a firewall and probably never will, even if (yeah, if, not when) I get high-speed internet. Which is another problem: If I remember correctly, SP2 is quite large. Maybe I should get it, but I probably won't too soon.

I'm just worried it will cause problems with advanced stuff, connections, customization, etc. I do expect to get Linux ASAP anyway, so I guess that'll be my new toy to play with :p

Anyone here actually using SP2 yet? Notice any difference? Did you back up your "important information" first?

I wonder if this will be any significant improvement in security for MS... but in the end, I don't care too much for my sake, because I have never had any problems...

[mikestorm]

For the most part it was seamless.

The biggest difference was the addition of the popup blocker. Not as good as the one you get with MSN Premium which blocks a page then shows you a small three inches by two inch thumbnail of the said page off to the side so you know what you missed BUT it is better (in my opinion) than the Google, MSN and Yahoo popup blockers.

The second biggest difference was The Security Center which is just a switchboard that shows your firewall / anti virus / MS auto update settings.

Thirdly, some OE settings were tweaked.

Keep in mind I am severely trivializing SP2, but you wanted to know the major differences from the end user point of view, and those were it for me!

[Westlander]

...and a lot of games doesn't want to work. Thank you, I'll keep my ol' good 98'er.

[Sampo]

...
Anyone here actually using SP2 yet? Notice any difference? Did you back up your "important information" first?
...


I currently have that Service Pack installed on both of my computers for a few weeks and they seem fine.

Primary Computer.

ASUS A7V333, AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 1 Gig RAM, 2 80 Gig Segate Baracuda drives, ATI All-in-wonder 9800, Win XP Home Edition.

Secondary Computer built with old leftovers (Which I dubbed "Soyokaze")

ASUS P3V4X, Pentium III 800 Mhz, 512 Megs RAM, 1 60 Gig Fujitsu drive, Geforce 4 Ti 200, WinXP Home Edition.

Anyway, both installations of the service packs went without problems, it just took a while to install though. Especially on Soyokaze. :sweat:

Currently I am using ZoneAlarm Pro, so I can't give any opinions about supposedly improved firewall.

Although I do have a problem on the primary computer, but I am not sure if it was the result of the Service Pack. When I boot up the computer and let Winxp load, then "Right click" an AVI file, it causes Explorer.exe to hit near 100% CPU Utilization, also it takes 20 seconds till the little menu appears with the various options ("Play" "Add to playlist" etc.), and it makes WinXP appear to freeze. But after that occurs, if I "right click" the same or different AVI file during the same session WinXP operates normally. It could have been the result of me installing and removing useless programs. :shrug:

Later