I have an older laptop which is perfectly fine for some simple stuff I plan to use it for. However, it came (and until yesterday had) with only Win XP Home, no service pack - searching the Microsoft site I came across the SP 1a pack, which I successfully installed, but not the SP 2 download - instead it seems the Microsoft links redirect you to the SP 3 pack (not interested - read way too many bad things about it), or to a Network SP 2 download (for IT Professionals!) which doesn’t seem to be what I need.
I did find googling several 3 other (non-MS) sites which proclaim to have SP2 for download (e.g. Software Patch), but I’m not sure if I can trust them, so I wonder if anyone knows a good trusted site with the SP2 download - or, even better, if you know where MS has hidden the SP2 download on their site, that’d be cool.
Thanks…
The network SP2 patch will work fine for you. All it does is download the whole thing before installing, rather than getting an installed which does the downloading for you. Hardly any difference.
That said, SP3 is perfectly stable. Unless you have a specific reason to avoid it (read: known incompatibility with legacy hardware), you may as well get it. 95% of it is just a a rollup of updates that you’ll end up applying anyway.
The network SP2 download is exactly what you want and will work just fine.
SP3 is fine. There’s nothing wrong with it, and not being up to date just means you are more likely to get hit by an exploit.
You might check out some torrent sites which have the microsoft updates and which usually download faster than the Microsoft one anyways.
Network SP2 is what you want. I dont understand why you cant use sp3. SP3 is simply SP2 plus all the hotfixes since. It adds a minimal amount of features like NAP or WPA2 support.
Most people with SP issues are people with machines infested to the hilt with spyware and viruses. The SP isnt the issue, its their filthy computer.
FWIW, I would never, ever download this stuff from a torrent site. I can max out a 10mbps pipe at download.microsoft.com. No need to take a chance with infected installers from Sven at the piratebay or another anonymous source.
Like what?
Thanks to all who answered about the Network SP2 download, it did indeed install just fine as stated, just wish it was labeled a bit better on the website (Since MS seems to imply it was not the right download for single computer installs).
As for SP3, if you google (yeah, I’m lower casing it as a generic verb now) for XP-SP3 reviews, you end up with more complaints, problems, horror stories, and wild accusations than for Vista & WinME combined it seems - it certainly gives me pause. Most comments (and these were posted months after SP3 was first released) revolve around the computer (after the SP3 install) randomly rebooting, and/or lots of Blue Screens where before there were none, and/or a performance hit of anywhere from 10% to 90%…
Keep in mind that when you do see all those “complaints, problems, horror stories, and wild accusations” about Win XP SP3, you’re only hearing from a small fraction of the users. Most of the installs went fine, and no one bothered to post anything about it.
I think there’s some merit to not installing new updates immediately after they’re released. Sometimes a new update is released and within days, the internet is full of reports of a specific problem, which gets corrected within a week or two. (I seem to recall iTunes 7.0 for Windows was one example. This shows 7.0.1 was released 2 weeks later, which I think corrected the problems.)
But Windows Service Pack 3 has been out for over a year. I wouldn’t hesitate to install it.
[computer shop owner hat on]
#1 Your concerns with SP3 are misplaced, also the SP3 pack will roll up others. You dont need to install SP2 then SP3, any non SP3 Xp install can be rolled up to 3 with that update.
#2 I would rather peel my arms with a dull potato peeler than start pulling updates to windows from third party sites.
My understanding is that SP3 does not include SP1. In other words, you can’t go from Windows XP to SP3 without first installing SP1.
Nope the newest ones will roll up even a totally unpatched machine.
I love how people seem to understand that anything your read on the web, especially things user generated, should be taken with a massive grain of salt, but when it comes to Microsoft/Windows criticism all those filters and critical reasoning go out the window.
I’m not sure what you mean. My point was that I’ve seen people say that they don’t want to buy a particular brand of hard drive or consumer electronics device (or install a service pack to an OS) because they’ve seen complaints about it on a website. But it seemed to me that the vast majority of the users of that hard drive, consumer electronics device or OS service pack didn’t have any problems and so didn’t bother to post to a website about it.
In other words, anecdotal evidence perhaps isn’t the best way to make a decision.
Does that make sense?
I know what you are saying. Your rationale is perfectly sensible and, frankly, obvious. There are constantly threads on the Dope in which this type of confirmation bias is pointed out as obvious, however when those same people hear a meme about Windows or Microsoft it tends to be taken as gospel. I’m just pointing out the double standard.
Obviously you didnt apply your logic to SP2. I work in IT and remember all the complaints about SP2. You can still hear people complain about it on anti-MS places like slashdot today. Letst stroll down memory lane:
- Limits on open tcp connections.
- A bad DEP implementation
- Firewall on by default
- Performance hurt
- Memory hog
- More nag screens about updates
- Firewall not good enough
- Lousy WPA support
- Bluescreens
- Crashes
etc etc
Just a question: Are you referring to the latest SP3 or that all the SP3s would update a non-patched machine. I tried one version and it required SP1 is why I am asking. The SPs are supposed to do as you describe, but it wouldn’t; at least not at that time.