SP2
 

Available now at windows update

and? I wouldn't trust anything microsoft releases this early, as big as this package is.

Actually, I've been running SP2 for quite awhile now... Since it was released to manufacturing. Not a single hiccup or problem. I did have to tell the firewall to allow some of my games and stuff to work, but thats really the only inconvience it's been.

No problem here I think my computer is faster. I have Sygate for my Firewall so I just turned sp2 firewall off.

And! Take it any way you want... It's been beta tested to death by friends of mine that I trust and it is to me an improvement to my OS...
It also does a nice job with IE's popup protection...

I'm a little rough on the dates, but I believe it was released to the beta testers on the 6th as finished, and then it went on Technet on the 12th. What you're getting from WindowsUpdate now is exactly what I downloaded from Technet on the 12th.

I went ahead and installed it last night. No problems so far! :)

The new icons are nice.

I installed it last night also, only to have my system freeze 4 times while trying to boot up. Then after it took 20 minutes to boot, it was fine. :mad: :mad:

Didn't notice new icons because I use IconPackager anyway.

/takes a chance and downloads it.....

I installed it and didnt like it, it was blocking stuff that I wanted to download, stuff like plugins, and codecs. Plus my internet ran like hell with the firewall on. But I also had a hardware firewall i.e. a router so maybe the dual walls made it run slower. but then again I never had a problem with spyware and viruses before the service pack so I'm going to avoid it untill it comes out with an update or easier to use features.

You can disable the firewall, as well as a lot of the extra checks that IE does. It's not hard to do, just go to either the IE Control Panel or the Security Center.

It's an update you want to have, for security reasons, if nothing else. There are, however, a lot of "under the hood" updates to XP that your average user will never know about that make it very worth installing SP2.

No problems here, though I only use IE when Firefox fails.

I've also installed it and had no problems. It is a bit annoying that I have A firewall running, just not their one, and it still annoys me with the "you are not protected" crap :|

I killed my SP2 install. It blocked some of my company's intranet sites that I need to access at home. So I'm going to give it a few months to wait and see until the bugs are worked out.

It won't let me f*ing keep "realtime protection" enabled with Norton Antivirus. It keeps shutting it off. POS.

I hate SP2. I cant freaking uninstall it

If you want to disable SP2's firewall, do so from within the Security Center, then change the way you're notified to not notify you.

I told the Security Center that I have another firewall that it can't detect (my gateway), and then told it to quit bugging me, and haven't looked at it since.

Has anyone else Net speeds just gone to hell since installing SP2? No, the new firewall isn't enabled but my net speeds seem to be taking "dramatic pauses." (I will click on a link or url and it takes my computer a few beats before everything kicks in and I think runs a tad bit slower). Has anyone else experienced this? Just wondering. Thanks

do you have a lot of other things downloading,

sp2 limits the number of outbound tcp connections, used to be unlimited. this can slow you down if you are downloading around 50 things, ie p2p.

theres a hack somewhere out there.

Yeah...I installed it a few nights ago and noticed there is a "hitch."

It's not slower, but there is a discernable pause before it starts getting where it's going.

Everything else seems to be running just as well, if not better though. :)

Can anybody explain to me in English what "Data Execution Prevention" (right-click my computer | properties | Advanced | Data Exectuion Prevention)

I know what the papers say and what I've managed to find online, but nobody seems to know if there are any performance issues attached to it.

What does data execution prevention do?
Data execution prevention (DEP) is a set of hardware and software technologies that perform additional checks on memory to help protect against malicious code exploits. In Windows XP SP2, DEP is enforced by both hardware and software.


taken from

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro.../sp2mempr.mspx

See that's what I read...along with about a dozen other pages that all seem to say the exact same thing.

I just looked at the settings again and I must have mis-read the second option. You can't turn it completely off at all! All you can do is scale it back to cover essential windows services and make exception lists for those programs you do have problems with.

I was really asking about performance, something which none of the articles seems to address. I've read there are issues with Divx and some 3d games, but haven't seen anything as to the casual user. I was just wondering if anyone had.

Edit: Hanabal mentioned that outbound TCP connections are now limited to 10 and was looking for a workaround....

For what it's worth...

I found this here and this one as well.

and a link to the program here.

I have to turn off the GD firewall every time I reboot. I told it I have a firewall of my own and do not monitor, then have it not warn me of firewall issues, but everytime I reboot it is back to default bitching becuase I do not have their firewall enabled.

Noticed that as well.

It's stopped warning me that the firewall is off, but now it's turning it on by itself.

It's happened twice already, but further testing will ensue....

I finally had enough. After constantly haggling with the WIndows Firewalla and a crawling internet speed, I removed the Service Pack. I will miss the Pop Up Blocker, which I thought did a very good job, but I am much, much happier without it.

Out of curiosity, to those of you who uninstalled SP2 - what are you going to do a few months down the road when MSFT pretty much requires you to have SP2 to continue to get Windows Updates?

Methinks that by the time MS makes it SP@ a requirement, they'll have most of the kinks worked out. With something this significant, I don't have the balls or skills to download it right out of the gate. I'm spending my time watching the other brave souls and trying to learn from their experiences.

To. those of you who have downloaded it, thanks for taking that first step. Your initiative is of great value to the rest of us.

I finally got the firewall to stop initiating on it's own. I just set it to off and changed the monitoring selection.

For what it's worth, I haven't had any substantial problems with SP2. It seems to run just fine. I was considering uninstalling it, but since I've haven't had any considerable problems with I'm not going to. I just don't feel like opening that can of worms. :)

i have heard that if you play online games, sp2 will cause a loss of fps. Has anyone expirienced this?

I wouldn't believe everything you read. I've had absolutely no problems with online games - especially FPS games (Joint Operations, Doom 3, etc.) since installing SP2. No loss of framerate, no additional latency.

STILL cannot get the GD firewall to stop worrying about itself.

I have it turned off, and also set to not monitor a firewall I have my own that I will take care of. EVERYTHING to do with the firewall has been turned off or disabled yet the fucking thing still changes itself to warn me about it everytime I reboot and shows me the security center after every reboot whining about no firewall

I finally broke down and installed it, has anyone else's computer been insanely slow upon first start up? Does anyone know how to speed it up? I went through and removed anything I didn't use, cleaned out the registry, plus removed stuff in msconfig, but it is still sluggish... I am afraid I might have to reformat.

After installing it IE6 and outlook express shortcuts were gone: both the icons and in the start menu. I had to go program files for ie6. But in oe the application files it has is to reinstall it. The possiblity of duplicating files can cause errors; does anyone know what to do? I checked google and MS site with no direct info. I wish I wouldnt have done this.

Havent had any problems with SP2 here, just all the same frustrations with windows i've always had.

Installed it yesterday and I have had not a single problem yet. Even without the firewall selected, no problems with that either.

Have installed it on 2 PCs, one w/ XP Pro the other XP Home. No problems however had to turn off the firewall and my laptop in order to use a VPN connection to my company's network. Not a big thing to me.

I had to do a system restore to go back pre SP2. It would appear the majority havent had problems. The F***** issue here is in order to get any sec updates Sp2 has to be installed. Ill try again.

Weeks later, still no problems.

Then the chances are are that your copy of XP may not (perhaps) be legitimate.
SP2 will not install/uninstall on dodgy XP installations.

Try performing a SCAN DISK and DEFRAG on your HDD's and see if there are any performance gains. Also in the "System Properties / Advanced / Performance Options", see if you've selected "Programs" and not "System Cache" in the Memory Usage section.

HTH's :)

Was wondering; were you running SP1 and up to date with all pre-existing critical updates??

I've been pretty fortunate it seems; not having any problems with the install or post-setup (which was pretty quick and simple). But having said that it is interesting to see how other people's installations and problems encounted are resolved.

Windows is *thankfully, not the only OS I run at home.

SP2 has been working flawlessly on all of my computers.

I have it installed and unlike others haven't noticed any increased performance, other than booting up.

I remain afraid to touch the thing. Seems like Pragma is trying to convince us all though for some reason. Not sure what that is all about.

I will install it when I have to. With Firefox and my firewall, I can last a little while before really needing to install this bloatware that will take me weeks to recover from if I am lucky from the looks of it.

Installed it when it was first released as the networking package or something (240ish mb download) and hadn't had any problems on this PC or the laptop I have.

Yes absolutley. While I didnt have automatic updates on; I frequented the MS site often to get updates manually. I've never had an issue.

Aside from Ie6 and OE6 going away; I dont like the way SP2 force feeds itself into quick launch. Im sure there is a registry tweak that could modify that; but it seems like MS is forcing its firewall. This service pack seems very invasive to me. I still havent reloaded it; because my system is running great- its the security leaks Im concerned about. Upon going to the MS it wont let me uncheck the Sp2 to go to other choices- that should be noted.

I was annoyed, but it only stays bottom right if there is something "wrong". You can tell it you have another firewall running, and that box is ticked. I have it set to alert me when there are updates (not automatic), so that is ticked and I have up to date anti-virus - three ticks! Havn't seen the icon in my lower right for ages!

Sun Tzu,
As spindles has indicated there are ways to identify if you wish to use the MS firewall or continue with your existing firewall/security settings.There is less to consider worrying about if you bring the OS up-to-date by install the SP. To insist avoiding installing the SP because of security leaks is like installing XP onto a new box and not performing any updates at all.

Still it's your call, do what you feel comfortable with.

Longhorn won't be available until the third to last quarter of 2006 I think.

There's still the option of going down the exciting road of Linux. :)

This is a feature. Not a "feature", but a real live Feature. The vast majority of the worlds XP users don't know what their doing. Hell, it's hard for me and I'm a Tier 1 Network Engineer. Placing nag icons in toolbar will get the masses to use a firewall, update their patches, and load a virus checker. MS has raised the baseline for security on XP, and that's a Good Thing.

As a security professional, it bugs me at a fundamental level to see people refuse to install patches :p

This will be of interest for anyone (small %) who uses VPN under XP.
------------------------------------------------------------------
XP SP2 distribution accelerated, VPN problem fixed
Joris Evers, IDG News Service

23/09/2004 08:59:48

Microsoft will accelerate the rollout of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) over the next month and has released the first official update for SP2 to fix a problem some users had with VPNs (virtual private networks).

As of Friday, Microsoft had distributed SP2 to roughly 20 million users through the Automatic Updates feature in Windows and the Windows Update Web site, a Microsoft spokesman said Wednesday. Most of these users are home and small business users, he said.

The software maker is accelerating distribution of SP2 to reach its goal of updating 100 million PCs through Automatic Updates by Oct. 18, two months after SP2 was first made available through the automatic update service.

"Microsoft is aggressively monitoring and managing the download of SP2 and will be increasing the number of downloads over time," the Microsoft spokesman said.

Microsoft has been gradually pushing out SP2 to users via Automatic Updates since Aug. 18 and is still adding localized versions of the security-focused update. SP2 is currently available in about 16 languages, according to the Microsoft spokesman. Microsoft has said it will offer the update in 25 language versions.

Shortly after Microsoft released SP2, a problem was detected that affected users of VPNs. Microsoft last month made available a temporary fix and earlier this week released a permanent fix in the form of an update, the first patch for the mammoth SP2.

The update, detailed in article 884020 in Microsoft's Knowledge Base, fixes a problem with applications attempting to connect to loop-back IP (Internet Protocol) addresses other than 127.0.0.1. SP2 blocks all those addresses and users see an error message.

Microsoft made a network installation package of SP2 available to enterprise customers on Aug. 9 and started automatic delivery to PCs running Windows XP Home Edition on Aug. 18. Automatic delivery of the service pack to Windows XP Pro machines was postponed until Aug. 25 to allow business users more time to block the update.

Microsoft has labeled SP2 a "critical" update and urges all Windows XP users to install it as soon as possible. As of March this year, Microsoft had sold about 210 million Windows XP licenses, not counting volume license sales to businesses. There are about 600 million Windows PCs in use worldwide, Microsoft estimated in July.

More information on the SP2 VPN issue is available at:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=884020

Nice of MS to rig it with explorer-crashing clusterfuck errors if you have googlebar installed. Anyone else get this? Any solutions? My next OS is definitely not going to be a MS product.

Nope, I've put it on 4 computers with the Google toolbar, no problems with it at all.

And besides, if MS really had some kind of conspiracy to kill it, I think they'd make the toolbar itself crash (or simply uninstall it!) rather than Explorer.

I'm still thinking about installing it. I have this feeling of "don't fix it if it ain't broken", but OTOH, it's Windows, so it's broken anyway... It's the horror stories I've heard that tell me to not install, while it's the other stories that tell me to ignore the first group.

I just can't make up my mind. (I do have a slipstreamed install CD, so I could always install it from scratch if I wanted to.)

Updated this week via auto update and haven't seem to have any problems. I too have Google toolbar and it works just fine,like it always did. Time will tell if security holes continue to be found out.