XP Service Pack 2 available

[Xoc]

The XP service pack 2 is available from the Windows Update web site. I installed it last night on one of my machines and had no problems. It was about a 90 MB download, and took quite a while to install.

Anyone else have experience with downloading and installing it, both good or bad? Did it break any programs you run?

(Let's try to keep the anti-Microsoft flames down and discuss any real problems or successes.)

[dataguy]

Installed it on 5 machines so far, and all has gone well. Two of them were having problems before the upgrade (kids computers) and they now boot and run noticibly faster.

Had 1 app that needed a port opened up before it would work, but that took less than a minute.

We're going to have to start a discussion on how to get around the web-beacon disabling that occurs in Outlook Express. This is a good feature from a consumer point of view, but my business relies on web beacons to keep our email lists current. Not sure how many people use OE, but I would imagine it's pretty substantial.

[Conard]

I had to check and I have no problem with WinZip.
I also use a wireless network and if anything it was much easier to set up a new machine then before and the old connections went through the update with flying colors.
I used the developer upgrade and burned it to a disk to port to all of my equipment and also other peoples computers.
Counting my own machines I have done the upgrade on 11 computers now with no problems at all.

[pageoneresults]

Downloaded and installed that 111MB beast without any issues. I believe it took about 45 minutes on the new Sony Vaio A190. Will be testing throughout the weekend and running it through my normal routines. So far, so good.

P.S. It did change my startup screen from the Windows XP Professional verbiage to just Windows XP.

[COlarry]

Manual download. Second day, wireless funky for a while, but SP2 adds fun icon during process of "repair" (renewing of IP addresses) of wireless connection and all was then well. I like the new specific wireless network icon in system tray as well (to differentiate other networks). Noticeably speeded up Outlook Express that was gummed up by Norton Anti-Spam (even after AS removed). Also adds nice right click firewall on/off from system tray as well.

[zafile]

After installing SP2, I have noticed one item changed in my Internet Explorer: Windows Media button MIA.

Before installing SP2, the Windows Media button used to be next to the buttons Search, Favorites and History.

After installing SP2, the button is gone.

[Conard]

After a couple of re-boots the system tray icon disappears. I thought it was broke but it looks like an undocumented feature....

[creative craig]

Installed and running fine, tested it on my girl friends family PC and it seems to be doing well.

No problems with AOL, Mcafee or Norton.

[Jon_King]

The best I could have hoped for. Everything was flawless. For me, MS did a fine job.

[WebDon]

I did the manual download and everything went well. So far no problems. It's been 3 days. : )

[dauction]

I just complated the download..anyone use mailwasher? With the new xp download...is it good enough to keep outlook fairly clean ..clean enough to drop mailwasher?

[WebBender]

I'm curious why anyone would install this unless you actually really felt a need to?

Always better to wait version "a". ;)

You folks test it out for me. I'm running Mozilla and keep NAV and AdAware + SpyBot well updated.

If I had a 'play' computer I'd give it a whirl, but I just reinstalled my system a few weeks ago and all is working smoothly. No need to muck it up with the latest service pack.

:)

WB

[chrisnrae]

I installed it - was having an issue and they wanted every update available on my compuyter before attempting to fix it. No problems for me.

[mattglet]

You folks test it out for me. I'm running *Opera* and keep AdAware + SpyBot well updated.

I will gladly let you guys be the guinea pigs, my yearly format is not due just yet.

This has been an interesting thread to see each person's response. It just seems you have to get lucky with your system configuration/programs installed to have a successful update. I wonder what the percentage is with people who have pirated copies vs. non-pirated, or if that even has anything to do with it.

[isitreal]

an impressive number of posters had a full failure, I guess that problem they had on the final release candidate where 3 out of 5 test machines fully failed hasn't been worked out.

you shouldn't download a service pack this big and install it as soon as it comes out, wait a month or two for the fixes and bugs to get more ironed out, personally I wouldn't touch xp with a 10 foot pole, it's w2k all the way til I switch to the happy penguin someday.

I heard that xp sp2 breaks the 127.0.0.1 loopback interface which breaks apache development boxes, any news on that?

looks like ms is having more than their share of troubles, they've also abandoned almost every major component of longhorn in order to make the '06 release date, pretty funny.

[mack]

Well you can add me to the total failure list.

I did a clean install of XP home yesterday. I used windows update to install sp2 and from there on the system was unusable. it would turn on and within 30 secods - 1 min it would either freeze up totaly or flicker the bsod and power down for re-boot. Ended up having to do another clean install. This time auto update has been disabled.

Mack.

[macrost]

Welcome to my world mack. I just degraded from a legit copy of xp pro to xp home. The sp2 was a total faliure on my system. I'm lucky to have uploaded all of my files to my server today.

[lawman]

It might not have made any difference, but I reflashed the BIOS on all computers before installing.

[creative craig]

I have not yet run SP2 on my laptop. I have the CD coming in a few weeks.

Seeing as that is where I do all of my work I will back everything up twice. Still no problems on the PC though.

I hope that you did not damage any important files mack ;)

[mack]

Thankfully I didn't have anything on it. I mean a total re-install of xp followed by running sp2. At first I though it must have been a hardware issue and the timing was a coincidence, but when re-installed again everythign worked just fine.

To make matters worse when I tried to activate windows it sais "my product key had been used to many times" even although it was deing installed on the same system as it was yesterday lol

Ended up having to call ms for a new product key.

Mack.

[Small Website Guy]

I installed it, no problems.

IE now has a pop-up blocker. Now that the the majority of web surfers will soon have pop-up blocking, this will change a lot of the web for the better!

Also, SP2 automatically sets the firewall setting to true, so everyone will now have a firewall.

[creative craig]

Internet explorer information bar, what a waste of space. Manged to control it now though!

[isitreal]

Also, SP2 automatically sets the firewall setting to true, so everyone will now have a firewall.

It would be more accurate to say that now everyone will think that they have a real firewall, but they won't, last I checked the xp 'firewall' only blocks incoming traffic, which leaves all those lovely trojans free to phone home with their keystroke logs and whatever other fun toys they have to play with, another example of MS simply not understanding what security means even when they try, this one is especially bizarre since all you have to do is download a real software firewall and look at its features then implement them.

Of course I haven't seen popups myself for a long time, but I haven't used IE for a long time either.

The safe rule of thumb with any major software product 'upgrade' or service pack is to let everyone else be the company's beta testers, then after all the problems have been ironed out, download the product.

As anyone can plainly see from this thread, in this small sample there is a massive failure rate, seems to almost equal the legendary NT 4 service pack that broke big percent of installations and forced most big companies to totally revamp their methods and testing procedures when it comes to MS service packs and 'upgrades'.

[Small Website Guy]

Bill Gates knows what's good for your computer. Trust him.

[Teknorat]

Have installed on 5 PC's now- no problems whatsoever.

[D_Blackwell]

Except for testing, I've all but abandoned IE6. Does this make it ok to sit by a decent while before messing with SP2? Or will the potential problems still be there either way? I usually do all the updates, but not sure that I want to jump into one so massive. I'd rather let the front line troops take the heavy fire first.

[flashfan]

After SP2 installed, the ATI vedio card doesn't work well. My PC keeps crashing. Have to use 800x600. :-( It was 1800x1200.

[Chaos]

I haven't had many problems yet in functionality of the operating system itself. one caveat is it requires a person to break out of fullscreen mode on certain applications in order to enable firewall-level network access. this is mostly the case in games. all in all, i really like the job microsoft has done with sp2. i wouldn't recommend corporate deployment until it has been tested a little more though.

[Dudermont]

Not a total failure but I think I will be formating soon. My system never really crashed before, but the first time that I restarted after installing SP2 I crashed. All I could interact with was the one window that was active when it desided to do it.

I also followed a guild here on webmasterworld to have IE 5.5 and IE 5.01 installed along with the newest IE (for testing) and now the new one is the only one that works. If I try to open one of the older ones then the google desktop bar doesn't work till I go and end tasks in task manager.

Also explorer stops responding about 3/4s of the time when I right click on a file, I don't know why it works some of the time. I am running the same programs.

Either way I would have rather not installed it, it is way less stable now. Oh well.

[WallyBob]

I had SP2 for about 6 days. I didn't have any problems with my computer running but I was mightily bugged by it trying to duplicate the security measures I already had in place.

Also, and more frustratingly, I tried to install a well known web analytics product afterwards and ended up spending about 4 days on the phone with their tech support trying to get it to work. It wasn't until I had uninstalled and reinstalled the program 7 times that one of their techs said, "If you have SP2 on your computer we can't make it work."

I uninstalled SP2 and was finally able to leave that unfortunate chapter behind me.

[kapow]

No problems :)

I have:
- Wireless network
- Norton
- ZoneAlarm
- WinZip
- All sorts of DTP stuff (DW, PhotoShop, CorelDraw...)
- An old laptop on the network (win 2000).
- MS office
- Mailwasher
- ...etc