SP2, you cheeky bastard

The BBQ Pit
1

OK, so I’ve got a Microsoft keyboard. I’m not proud of it, but I wanted an ‘ergonomic’ split keyboard, and it was cheap on eBay.

Fine. So I reset the ‘extra’ buttons so that ‘messenger’ didn’t load MSN, but my own choice. Likewise with ‘mail’, etc.

Service Pack 2 reset them all!!! First I know is pressing the ‘messenger’ button, and getting the evil fucker from MS jump onto my screen!!! What the hell do they think they’re doing? WHY? (Other the obvious, that they’re desperate to keep people using their software at any price?)

(I guess I’ve made up made up for my thread praising Microsoft a couple of days ago)

2

Youn praised Microsoft?? :eek:

I tend to think of them as a necesary evil. I am avoiding SP2 until I NEED it.

3

I praised them because I had problems installing SP2, so contacted support - and got a prompt individual email, which solved the problem. Which wasn’t what I expected.

4

I loaded the registry key to postpone SP2 from automatic update.
The two newest PCs had SP2 installed. Gateway shipped them with the firewall off.
I can get into them over the network, our goofy software works. All that is left is to check printer and file sharing.

5

I can only hope that you will never need this piece of trash Service Package.

I had some problems with my mouse driver, after installing SP2, GorillaMan. I had never seen the BSOD on Windows XP (I’ve been using XP since the Beta version), but whenever I plugged in my A4Tech Mouse (USB), up would come the BSOD, and I would have to restart. Luckily, the manufacturer had an updated driver that SP2 accepts, so… I have a mouse again.

I also had some problems with my Norton A/V, after the installation. I did disable Norton during the installation, so I can only guess that SP2 just wants to be the sole A/V. It’s working now (Norton), but – much to my trepidation – not because of anything I did.

Overall, SP2 is a nightmare of an update. I hope MS takes note of these problems when they think up SP3 (but I’m not gonna hold my breath).

Oh, and Mobile PC concluded that machines have taken considerable performance hits, following the SP2 patch, as well. (Link is dated… i.e. it might change). And Slashdot has a topic, “File and Printer Sharing Insecure in XP SP2”, too.

What a mess.

LilShieste

6

So…a combination of up-to-date software and up-to-date software worked?! And this is Microsoft’s fault how?

Granted, there’s been problems with Norton. But it’s a bloated POS anyway, just IMHO obviously. (Hell this is my thread, IT’S A POS FULL STOP!!! :smiley: I feel better )

It’s a major upgrade. Nobody should perform a major upgrade without backups, or without the anticipation of problems. OK, so all the warning you get is “You should make a backup before proceeding” - but what OS gives you much more than that, anyway? (And it looks like Longhorn will be little more than XP3, once they’ve dropped a couple more features. Trust me, I want to see the beast dead, too. But I’m not going to slag off the individuals in the company who’ve been helpful to me beacuse of that.)

“World Peace not acheived due to Service Pack 2”?
Come on, we know that XP is fundamentally insecure. To find holes that SP2 hasn’t fully plugged, and hype them up into a scandle, is just boring. And the ‘performance hits’ are probably because they were testing via network setups and internet access, with TCP/IP being restricted for the standard setup as described by Microsoft.

7

Well, it’s not like we’re changing Operating Systems, or something. I just really wonder what kind of updates MS included in their patch that would essentially null-and-void a driver.

I guess I could just write off the Norton problems to Norton…

I agree… but when a user purchases an OS, they expect more than a half-way completed work. With Service Packages like this, it almost seems like major/semi-major things were missing from the OS, and were “remedied” in SP2.

The more I hear about Longhorn, the more I worry about WinME happening all over again.

When I first read the article, I was under the impression that there was a hole that was fixed in SP1, but then was “re-broken” with SP2. I might have jumped to this conclusion, in which case I apologize for the confusion.

In a nutshell-- I dont expect MS to “plug all of their holes” (take that as you will) with one Service Pack or five. Maybe it’s just one of those “ignorance is bliss” moments, but I really could have done without this particular patch.

LilShieste

8

My father-in-law, who has been using and building computers since I was in diapers, just upgraded to SP2 on his company machine-- and experienced a complete meltdown, since his PC would no longer boot. When he finally got it working, his computer is now 10 to 20% slower than it was, even when not connected to a network.

Wander by any geek store this weekend, and you’ll see a verry long line of people with disfunctional PCs, courtesy of Microsoft.

9

I’ve no idea. But still don’t get the problem - there was an updated driver, that worked - perhaps the whole point of the new driver was to fix the SP2 problem?

I’ll agree that XP originally shipped in a bad condition. But updates to all OSs are a necessity. They’re such huge things that if they were to wait until all the bugs had been found, they’d never ship. (As a comparison, Suse Linux has been through 5 releases since XP emerged.)

Me too.

As there has been since the mid-80s.

10

I had a similar annoyance as the OP - I’ve disabled MSN Messenger and use Trillian (I’m fed up of people with screen names as long as the screen itself), disabling Messenger by renaming the directory it’s in to Messenger1. After installing SP2 I check my Hotmail account and find that pesky Messenger has loaded up and disconnected Trillian!

Cheeky bastards.

Oh, and I seem to be the only person in the world who had no problems installing with Norton running. Go me.

11

I just installed SP2 this afternoon. I also installed some new RAM (added 512)afterward, and my pc is running like a dream! I have a very basic Dell pc, no special graphics or input/output devices, I don’t play and different games or anything, just keyboard, mouse, monitor, CD. Wham bam thank you ma’am.

12

I have never been a fan of Microsoft, but have to say I am pretty pleased with SP2. I am no longer harassed by unwanted pop-ups and my system has been Spyware-free for longer than it has ever been!!

XP was pretty bad security-wise, and SP2 took care of that. It is however not all sunshine and roses. I have noticed that my Peer-to-Peer software did slow down. When I ran Azureus I couldn’t receive my Email or browse the Internet. I had to download a patch made by some hacker to increase the maximum number of TCP/IP-threads before it worked.

In short, if you have problems with pop-ups and spyware, SP2 will greatly improve your Internet enjoyment.

13

You seem to be pretty easy to please, considering that you paid for this product and had to search for fixes yourself just to make it work properly.

MS has been putting out very sloppy products for years, just banking on their high market share to keep out competitors. I thought at one time that desktop OS was a natural monopoly, but I now think that competition is needed to keep the product quality up.

14

Point taken.
I agree that it is far from perfect, but it did improve Windows XP. I was going berzerk from all the popups and unwanted software that kept installing. You now have much more control on what is allowed to run and what isn’t.

The problem with Azureus is not Microsoft’s fault, I think, but more to the fact that (most) P2P-software hogs bandwidth like there is no tomorrow.

I have been a MS-hater for a long, long time, but I am finally at the point that I am almost pleased with their product. :eek:

15

Here we go… :dubious:

Upload latest SP. Install changed all personal settings. Change them back. Now mouse won’t work. Get updated driver from mouse manufacturer. Norton needs an update, too, to work with the new op sys. Now op sys is 20% slower, so get more RAM. Motherboard won’t address that much RAM, toss motherboard.

New motherboard, XP says system is bootleg, call MS for new keycode. New keycode installed, Explorer won’t come up. Trace problem to peripheral driver. Manufacturer out of business, no new drivers available. Bought new peripheral, installed. Now keyboard won’t work. Contact MS; known problem with that particular peripheral and hard drive. Download patch. Install patch. Patch changed all personal settings. Change them back. Mouse now runs in reverse and needs to be held upside down, but that’s no biggie.

Found MS occupies 90% of HD space, no space for programs. Bought new, larger HD. Motherboard BIOS not compatible with new HD, download new BIOS & flash. XP says system is now bootleg, call MS for new keycode. New keycode installed, new peripheral needs new driver – the one out of the box was obsolete when shipped. Download, install.

Delete 45GB of unnecessary MS files on HD. Whoops – deleted one that was needed after all. Can’t undelete, must reinstall sys. XP won’t reinstall on top of new SP. Wipe out opsys, reinstall. Install says I need to get updates. Update web page says I already have them, stupid. Download them anyway. Takes 9 hours to download on a fast connection and 3 hours to install.

Now network card disabled. Call tech support; advised to never use IPs with 6’s in them. Change all 6’s to 5’s. Re-address all connected systems. Network driver grabs 120MB more HD space and creates new, strange file names; oh, well…

Cat steps on keyboard. XP says cat is bootleg, get new keycode. New keycode causes sound card to emit high-pitched squeal. Turn off computer, reset card. XP says new sound card is bootleg, get new keycode. Reinstall sound driver. Wrong version; get new one. Now the keyboard plays music and the speakers control the mouse movement.

All personal settings changed. Change them back. Registry now corrupted. MS says need new keycode; get one. Install Norton and do full sytem scan. Norton doesn’t finish. Call Norton; known bug with that particular keyboard, mouse, peripheral, hard drive and motherboard. Affects only users with middle initial “A” who have a Hello Kitty decal on the desk. Download patch. Now mouse doesn’t work and BSOD screen says, “System hopelessly obsolete. Just what were you thinking? Buy a new computer now!”

Toss computer in trash and go sailing. Ahhh… :slight_smile:

16

This is pretty much it. XP attempts to throttle large numbers of TCP connections from the PC, since this behaviour is characteristic of a great number of self-propagating viruses. Throttling them in this way quite radically reduces the potential for the spread of viruses, and has been advocated for quite some time by many people in the industry, not just MS. For almost all “normal” internet usage the effect of this throttling will be unnoticeable, but some P2P protocols use very large numbers of connections to individual machines, and are thus clobbered by the throttling. Azureus apparently already has the option available to slowly start the connections, thus avoiding the throttling problem.

A desirable new behaviour caused slight slowness with one P2P protocol, which is trivially solved. I must be very easily pleased indeed, because I’m glad the problem was caused in the first place. Network resistance methods such as the TCP throttling are going to be very helpful in stopping wide-scale virus infections. If it causes a slight problem that’s solvable with 5 seconds of googling, then so be it.

17

Fair point, Badger, I didn’t realize that his email and internet problems were really caused by the P2P software doing unusual things with the connection. However, I still contend that it is not right that he needs to go outside of his OS for a hacker’s patch to fix the problem. If he needs more TCP connections, why can’t his OS (which is causing the bottleneck) allow him to select more?

This complaint is, of course, retracted if he really could have just changed a setting to fix the problem.

18

Huh. I have installed SP2 on both my work laptop and my home desktop. Not a whisper of a problem of either of them. I use ergonomic keyboards on both (two different varieties, at that), and none of my customizations were lost. Of course, I had long ago gone in on both computers when I first installed the OS on them and turned on the firewall and various protections manually, so none of that kicked in by surprise when I installed SP2. Really, the only thing that happened that was mildly annoying was that on my home computer my Norton subscription lapsed a while back and the new XP security doo-dad kept complaining about it (in addition to Norton complaining about it). But I found where that setting was kept and turned it off. All better now! :smiley:

19

I just installed SP2 this morning.

Did my regular weekly backups. Downloaded and installed.

No stalls, smooth and quick d/l, fast install.

Rebooted.

All my custom settings are fine. All my drivers are fine. Everything fine.

Oh, check that–I did have to bounce my router to get back into my home net.

Otherwise, I’m quite pleased. Firefox is happy, AVG is happy, Outlook is happy.

:shrug:

Wish I could piss and moan too, but I got nothing.

20

Quite apart from the obvious criticism of not getting up-to-date drivers before installing SP2…is it possible you’re computer just wasn’t up to the task? I’ve seen systems run a basic setup of XP on half MS’ ‘recommended’ minimum. But SP2 adds yet more bloat, perhaps pushing your computer to the point where it was shunting between physical and virtual memory constantly. (I’ve used Win2002 running on 48MB. That was painful.) (Oh, and after my earlier mentio of Linux, the major distros are equally fanciful about the capabilities of limited hardware)

But updating the OS, and assuming the slowdown needed more RAM? I wish I had that money to throw around at my computer problems. Hell, I’d have half a gig of RAM if I could use that logic. And what sized hard drive were you on? I’ve installed XP plus much else onto a 4MB drive with less than half being used. How much space could the 200ish MB of the SP download actually take up once installed?