WINXP service pack 2

[68DevilM]

download?

or

not download?

[eagl]

The only thing about it is that some of the security features like popup, activex, and download blocking, require action where before things just *happened* when you visited certain web sites.  That's not really a bad thing I guess, but you'll probably have to get used to telling MSIE that yes you really do want to download that file, etc.  The automatic update downloads also doesn't seem to work on my computer for some reason, but that could be because I'm behind a router/firewall.

I noticed no weird effects from sp2 in normal use or gaming, but AH is the only online game I play so other games might have issues.

All in all for me, it's a bit more security with no real drawbacks.  YMMV.

[68DevilM]

yeah ah is about it for me.

but ive also noticed service pack two seem to slow down my computer some, along with screwing up driver downloads.

[214thCavalier]

SP2 no problems here.

EDIT:

Out of 7 computers i fitted SP2 too, i have suffered only one with problems.

This one was randomly rebooting when clicking on links or windows close buttons etc.

Tracked this down to an old graphics driver installed, ATI Catalyst 3.2  i think.

With SP2 microsoft decided to dictate and basically control which areas of memory they want graphics cards to have access to.
The idea is to make sure all graphics card manufacturers start accessing the designated areas thereby avoiding MS getting support calls related to devices sharing memory addresses and causing conflicts.
Old drivers do not of course comply with this requirement.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/agp/UAGP.mspx

Via even go so far as to recommend you do not install there gart driver with SP2 and instead stick with the default windows version, although they do say their own version should be ok anyway.

Tried both and for me the default windows driver gave me a severe fps penalty still using the VIA version and no problems.

Anyway rolled back to before installing SP2, updated the ATI Catalyst drivers and installed SP2 again.
No problems at all now and stable as the other 6 computers.

One last thing go into the security centre and if you are running your own firewall then be sure to disable the windows built in one.

[llama]

The only SP2 problem I've had on any of the systems I've done relates to P2P programs. Apparently, SP2 only allows 10 "semi-open" TCP/IP connections at a time.  This blocks an SP2 machine from becoming a worm-broadcaster (good), but these are the same connections that most P2P programs use (oops).

If you go to any of the forums of any of the P2P sites, you'll find that there's a patch that opens up these connections again. Then you'll want the latest version of your P2P software that knows how to use the patched version of TCPIP.SYS.

That's it.

-Llama

[Delirium]

I placed SP2 on my old machine, my laptop, and my gaming rig... unfortunately my gaming rig didn't like it and wouldn't even boot up. I got stuck having to reformat the computer..

Not sure why, perhaps it was because I had recently upgraded my system and only repaired the version of XP I was using at the time. Still, having to reformat 1 out of 3 isn't great.

[StarOfAfrica2]

Just curious......

I disabled the firewall on installation but there are other options I didnt see any questions for in the install.  The popup-blocker is the biggest one.  Not that I have a problem with it, I jsut want to know how to get rid of it in case I want to.  Also, the annoying little shield down in the taskbar that keeps telling me I dont have the firewall running or autoupdate turned on.  How can I get rid of that?  It keeps putting its balloon up while I'm online trying to get my butt shot off, and its interfering with me being able to get proplerly positioned in front of the other plane.  

[FLS]

The popup blocker menu is in Tools in IE.

The security center options are in Control Panel.

--)-FLS----
Musketeers