Posted: 11/17/2005 8:38:46 PM EDT
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It has been a good long while since MS released SP2. What's the final word on installation? Good, bad, etc? I've put off installing it on my home PC and two of the PC's on our work network. It was installed on the other work computer without consulting me. The installation didn't have any effect on the computer's performance though.  I've downloaded it at home, but have yet to install it. The machine is less than 2 years old, running XP Home, no virus problems. I started to install it yesterday, but when I got a warning about backing up my data, I got gunshy and cancelled the install. |
| As long as you don't have three or four spywares, a trojan, and a few keystroke loggers running in the background you'd do fine. If you haven't kept up with the latest patches there's a pretty good chance that you're owned already. Typically within about 48-96 hours of a patch release there is functional exploit code available for download on the hackers sites/newsgroups. |
I've been trying to update Adobe on my home PC for the last 4 months. Looks like I'm going to have to break down and do a uninstall/install. To play it safe with SP2, I think I'll back up every damn thing I've got (photos, etc) and then install it. |
I've gotten a clean bill of health from AVG for the last year. I download and install every Windows Update that comes along. Save for SP2, of course. |
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Little slower then SP1 due to some security implements like DEP (Data execution prevention, protects against executing code stored in memory reserved for storage). The decrease is rarely seen since most programs (all mircosoft apps have) have released updates since then to fix any problems with SP2 preformance. The ones that haven't, range from minor to a slightly noticable difference. The security benifits of SP2 TOTALLY outweigh this and if you have something that is pitching a real fit about DEP, you can disable it. The wireless networking support is also greatly improved. ETA: I've been drinking enough to not remember to say, DO IT. |
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SP1 left 100% of our systems unusable since our Dell's lost their activation when it was installed and Word would no longer open many of the documents it created before SP1 was installed. SP2 was fairly smooth in comparison. It only left about 20% of the systems unusable versus 100% for SP1. SP2 didn't cause any additional problems with Office. Their software is still terrible, but at least Microsoft did a much better job with SP2 than SP1. I say go ahead and install it. You'll have to do it eventually anyway.z |
I would install it, SP2 plugs a lot of holes in previous versions of XP. I personally didn't encounter any problem with any software. I would run the currrent versions of anti-spyware Spybot and Adware, and also your virus scanner just to be double sure your system isn't infected by unwanted software.
I only knew of one website that used the DRM(digital rights management) software, and they had so many problems with it that they had to abandon it 2 months later; sometimes, a legit downloaded MPEG wouldn't play no matter what. Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about it. |