What's the status of SP2 these days?

#1 If you decide to hold true to the anti-microsoft idiocy that seems abundant on the internet through "12 year old fan bois" then you'd be told to always hold off it... but as I dont buy into that stuff I'll give you my unabridged experience:

- Installed sp2 as soon as it was available.
- Not a single problem with it yet.

Cant say much fairer then that?

-Craig

#2 Iv'e had sp2 since the begining and never had any problems.

#3 I fix computers as part of my job and for friends... SP2 did have a lot of problems. It was not a smart move to install it for a while... However, it seems fine now.

@Craig - Not installing SP2 was not idiocy. It was smart. There were problems that arose simply from installing it. Just because you didnt have problems, doesn't mean that there weren't problems for a lot of other people.

#4 I never said not installing sp2 was idiocy, I said the anti-microsoft feelings that are abundant on the net are.

I agree some people had problems, hence why i didn't say "install it now!" I just gave my experience.

#5 Fair enough... I would reccomend making a restore point and then installing it...

#6 That would be a very shrewdand wise move. Also, a quick google search to pick up any other people having problems with sp2 and apps that you commonly use would be a good bet too.

#7 Microsoft listed a number of applications which SP2 caused problems with the week it came out and kept updating it. A good portion of the problems were with antivirus software (which was sad because the security checking would give a number of false positives with both Norton and McAfee) and free firewalls. The kinks seem to have been worked out for the most part. We put off doing sweeps here at the university because there were a number of faculty and staff that used Word Perfect, SPSS, SAS, and ArcView. We've since done sweeps and haven't had any problems. I'm not sure of the problems in the game industry, though. I didn't have any problems on my Tablet PC, but I don't play games on it so much as do my Windows development and a good portion of my crappy programmer art there.

#8 Well, SP2 made it impossible for me to boot, so I was quite glad that XP has an excellent recovery setup.

MS is starting to make it more mandatory however, and I imagine they've also added in new patches. So once my PC is running again, it will probably get bumped to SP2 (if possible)

#9 I like SP 2, I know what programs are talkin to the internet now, I do recommend that when you first load a multiplayer game that you do it in windowed mode. The firewall will ask you if you want to allow the program have internet access and some programs don't like it when windows causes the pop up allowing/blocking access.

#10 Easiest and quickest solution to all SP2 problems...
www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/

Install this and I promise you will have no more problems with Windows XP SP2 :)/evilgrin

Seriously though, I have been migrating most of my friends and family to SuSE with great success.

SuSE has gotten to the point where it's user friendly and intuitive enough, for even complete computer newbies to use with no more training than they would need to run Windows in the first place.

#11 Install it.

Not a single problem that wasn't solved by RTFM.

Install it.

#12 SP2 had a lot of problems... if you check back on the microsoft newsgroups a huge ammount of people with random crashes from a number of things immediately after installing SP2 and very little MS response or help... had a home computer that had the same problems and a friend pc had similar problems...

Now it seems to be fairly stable though :) Waiting a month or two is usually a good idea, unless the additions are that critical for you.

#13 .

#14 Install SP2.

In case that was unclear ;)

#15 The major operational problems with SP2 are the firewall and some device drivers. For the latter, I can point to some issues with Firewire. If you use special hardware (and what gamer doesn't?), google well to make sure there aren't any outstanding issues and to see if you need driver updates.

For firewall issues, this is primarily an application problem and a training issue. For programmers, learn how to tell the OS what you need before you've revoked the user's ability to interact. MS publishes guidelines on how to handle this. Go check out MSDN.

For training, make sure you inform the user of the information they need, like what ports need opening (including what kind and which direction). I just visited an online radio station that advises listeners to disable the firewall to allow streaming packets through. What terrible advice! That's almost like telling someone they need to unfasten their seatbelts to use your brand of car speaker. They should instead indicate the ports to open.

I'm one of those "12 year old fanbois", but I'm 12 in dog years, and I explain the basis for my objections. SP2 was risky when first released and I waited several weeks to let others suffer the teething pains, and then deployed slowly, first on a test machine and then to others. The only tricky part I encountered was ensuring that my remote access software (VNC) was added to the firewall exception list to make sure I could still remotely access my workstations. (I work from home a lot, and ssh to my office Linux gateway and then tunnel VNC through from my home Linux gateway to my office Windows systems.)

#16

Quote:
SP2 was risky when first released and I waited several weeks to let others suffer the teething pains, and then deployed slowly, first on a test machine and then to others.

The only way to apply any patch to systems.

I'd further suggest Norton Ghost or some other patrtition imaging solution before you apply anything if you are worried about it.

#17 Or you could go back to Windows 95...

#18 I have SP2 since the first day, and never had any problems...

#19 I have SP2. I waited for it to become stable, however, and it works excellent.

#20 I had problems with it at first, however it seems to work now.