Xp Sp2

[mike]

Howdy folks.

 

 

I know this may be old news to some , but I just recieved my sp 2 disk from Microsoft.

 

Is it safe to go ahead and load this baby in?

 

thanks in advance.

 

Rock Sign

[Madmanmcp]

Nothing is perfect, and MS makes no guarantee. You won't know until you try.

Sorry but there is no way anyone can say it will be good or bad for you.

 

Now I have personally installed it lots of times now and its gone perfectly or with one or two little problems. The problems I had were easily solved.

 

Alls I can suggest to you is to read about it at the MS site and prepare the best you can, and then go for it. Waiting is not going to make it get better or worse.

[Deverill]

As Bob says, no one can be totally sure and it does depend on your particular set of hardware/software/settings/etc. I have personally installed it on 3 systems and they have gone off without a hitch.

[TCH-Dick]

Just make sure all of your other stuff is up to date, anti virus, firewalls, drivers etc before you install sp2, and if some preogram breaks after you install sp2 check the program vendors website for updates.

[mvpzone]

Hi

To add to Mike and Jim, you need patience as well. I have updated two pc's with sp2 and on an average the install alone took about 1.5 hours/pc for me. So it will help that you plan it when you have time and more over after the install you need to carefully check all of your existing software to evaluate if they work as expected or not.

 

And for the first install read up all you can about xp sp2.

 

Cheers

[oompahloompah]

I agree with Mike. Try making sure you have the most updated software if possible. There's even a list of software purported not to work with XP SP2 on the Microsoft website. Personally I've not had a problem with SP2... the only thing was the Security Centre which seems to duplicate the effort of my existing programs, and I'm sure many other people's programs as well eg checking to see if your Antivirus definitions are up to date, that's already being done by my current Antivirus software.

 

Good luck with it.

[Madmanmcp]

the only thing was the Security Centre which seems to duplicate the effort of my existing programs,

 

Same old tactic from M$, they get rid of the compitition by giving software away for free.

[mike]

Rock Sign

 

Thanks folks. I will do the read first and go for it. I have two here at home that are routered to dsl.

They both run AVG and Zone Alarm.

 

I will check for all updates and take 'er a step at a time.

 

Thanks for your input folks.

 

Rock Sign

[oompahloompah]

Actually I wouldn't mind their tactic - giving free stuff to stiff out competition. As long as they duplicate and better the efforts of existing programs instead of doing a half-hearted job. I switched off the whole darn Security Center at the end.

 

Funny how software has come to a point where it has become a lot more expensive than hardware.

[mike]

I switched off the whole darn Security Center at the end

 

Was the security center bothersome?

 

I use AVG and zone alarm on both and have already thought that I may not need their security center.

Conflicts?

[oompahloompah]

The Security Center has three main parts to it - the firewall, antivirus reminder and the auto-updates reminder.

 

Since you have ZoneAlarm, the firewall may not be necessary. They have upgraded the features somewhat but it's still quite basic.

 

The antivirus reminder lets you know when your AV definitions are outdated so if AVG does that, you probably wouldn't want to turn that on. (It has limited support anyway, it doesn't support every single AV program)

 

The auto-updates reminder lets you know if your Windows Automatic updates are switched on or off.

 

So there's that in a nutshell. My computer drastically slowed down at the beginning with the Security Center turned on, what with popups blinking here and there. I switched it off and had peace since then.

 

It's more troublesome than conflicting. I haven't had any conflicts but that's just my experience.