SillyDog701

[Antony]

According to this Windows XP Service Pack 2: Install With Care by CRN and [sdt=6691]SP2 kills ZoneAlarm Pro 5.1[/sdt] reported by Don Luchini, Windows XP SP2 is not that good to have, yet.

The smoke around the campfire, though, is that SP2 will wreak havoc on many security and firewall software utilities, forcing a redesign of antivirus suites, e-mail clients and firewalls.

If you have any problems with Windows XP SP2, SillyDog701 would like to hear your report.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.9

[Mandrake]

Anti-Virus software: Avast AntiVirus Professional edition - Works perfectly with SP2 installed

Software based firewall: None now, just my router.

Email client: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7.3 - No problems with SP2.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3

[Don_HH2K]

Well, I've had quite a few problems so far:
Startup time has increased two minutes (now 7 minutes, 5 with SP1, 3 with XP Release)
Security Center apparently drank some molasses, the menus are very slow to drop down/go up
It decided to turn off ClearType, so I wasted a good two hours looking for the pref to re-enable it
As Antony mentioned before, it killed ZoneAlarm, but I found out that it just no longer likes to boot with the system, in which case I now start it manually.
Accessing the Internet is now a joke, see the SP2 kills ZA 5.1 thread for all the ZA prompts I got.
Start menu has become very unresponsive. I usually have to click it once, then it will pop up and disappear two seconds later, click it again and it will be stable there. After that, if I modify a start menu item (or an All Programs item) the start menu will collapse and I will have to repeat the process.
Right-click yields the same problem as the Start Menu.

For all we know, we could have WinXP SP2.1 at some point.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; m18) Gecko/20000929 Netscape6/6.0

[Mandrake]

(now 7 minutes, 5 with SP1, 3 with XP Release)

How much stuff do you load at startup!? My machine boots to the logon screen within thirty seconds, and once I logon the machine is ready for use within five seconds. Windows XP SP2 increased my start-up time a bit, but after doing a clean install with SP2 I'm finding that my start-up times are basically identical to what they were before I installed SP2.

Overall I'm finding my system is more responsive than with just SP1, IE is much faster than before, and that all my applications are running perfectly.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

[Don_HH2K]

Well, at startup, that would be:
Touchpad controls (I would remove them but then I lose the scroll functioanlty)
ZoneAlarm Pro
HotSync Manager for Palm handheld syncronization
ATI video control, doesn't work without it
KBD (don't know what it is, but removing it disables the Fn, Context, and Windows keys)
And all the Windows services minus those that I don't use, like UPS and SmartCard.
It's been getting gradually longer with all updates and SPs. I'll check msconfig again, perhaps SP2 decided to re-enable everything again.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; m18) Gecko/20000929 Netscape6/6.0

[DJGM]

An interesting opinion piece about Windows XP Service Pack 2 was published at TheRegister yesterday.
Here are a couple of perhaps rather pertinent (depending on your own POV) excerpts from the article:

At long last, Service Pack 2 for XP has arrived. Like many in the security community, I'm excited about
this, as it represents real, true progress for Microsoft and their commitment to security. This is not
just a Service Pack - it really includes functionality, usability, and core changes in the underlying
code extensive enough to be called "XP2". In fact, I think I'll just call it that from here on out.

Later on in the same article . . .

Now, even with these tremendous advancements in XP, some people are going out of there way to
find fault with it, as they seem to do with all things Microsoft. In fact, some of this is just downright
hypocritical. Security researchers and analysts continually blast Microsoft for security issues, and
have done so forever (I've even done it.) But now that the company has responded in a signif-
icant way, it gets bad press for releasing a Service Pack that might break ISV applications.

The truth here is that if an application breaks, it really did need fixing anyway. And it's not like XP2
snuck up on us, either: most development documentation has been around since last year. Its just
that some are waiting until now to get on board. We as a security community have to embrace
and support XP2 if we want to continue to make headway in this space.

To read the full opinion piece - click the article title below . . .

"WinXP SP2: stop moaning and get downloading." - by Tim Mullen

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803

[Antony]

Microsoft has listed some length list for

programmes seem to stop working after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2
Programmes that may behave differently in Windows XP Service Pack 2

See also, [sdt=6751]this thread[/sdt].

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.9

[Wellander]

Hi,
This looks very bad.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 2.0.40607)

[DJGM]

Believe it or not, it's barely been a week since Windows XP SP2 was released, and there's
already a security bug that affects the newly updated XPSP2 version of Internet Explorer!

SECUNIA SAID a "highly critical" security bug in Internet Explorer
versions 6, 5.5 and 5.01 can cause others to tamper with your PC.

The firm said that the bug has been tested on fully patched
systems using both Windows XP SP1 and Windows XP SP2.

The full Secunia advisory (rated as Highly Critical) can be found here . . .

Oh well, iit had to happen sooner or later. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it happened sooner!

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax)

[Wellander]

Believe it or not, it's barely been a week since Windows XP SP2 was released, and there's
already a security bug that affects the newly updated XPSP2 version of Internet Explorer!

SECUNIA SAID a "highly critical" security bug in Internet Explorer
versions 6, 5.5 and 5.01 can cause others to tamper with your PC.

The firm said that the bug has been tested on fully patched
systems using both Windows XP SP1 and Windows XP SP2.

The full Secunia advisory (rated as Highly Critical) can be found here . . .

Oh well, iit had to happen sooner or later. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it happened sooner!

Hi,
Oh Boy.
This looks not good.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)

[Al]

Believe it or not, it's barely been a week since Windows XP SP2 was released, and there's
already a security bug that affects the newly updated XPSP2 version of Internet Explorer!

SECUNIA SAID a "highly critical" security bug in Internet Explorer
versions 6, 5.5 and 5.01 can cause others to tamper with your PC.

The firm said that the bug has been tested on fully patched
systems using both Windows XP SP1 and Windows XP SP2.

The full Secunia advisory (rated as Highly Critical) can be found here . . .

Oh well, iit had to happen sooner or later. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it happened sooner!

This is not good news for IE users on XP

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3

[Mandrake]

The flaw effects anyone running IE on Windows, not just XP. That's what they get for using IE, lol.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax)

[Al]

The flaw effects anyone running IE on Windows, not just XP. That's what they get for using IE, lol.

That's why I never use IE, too bad I don't have a small USB device that can store data, and I heard that Firefox can run stight form it, when I'm stuck using a computer with only IE, or worse IE4.0x

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3

[Jeffredo]

I just installed the full manufacturer's version (250mb) of SP2 yesterday (I got tired of waiting for the auto-update to do it!). This is on an old Dell V350 with a fairly recent install of XP (few months old). Here's my specs:

Powerleap Celeron 1.4 Upgrade
384MB PC100
30 Gig HD - About two thirds free.
Voodoo5 PCI Video Card
Zonealarm 5.1 free edition
Avast! Home Antivirus

My first boot took about three minutes, but I guess it was dealing with all the new information. It brougt up the security screen which recognized my ZoneAlarm (and turned off the Windows firewall automatically) and Avast! anti-virus. The second reboot was normal length. I defraged my hard drive and the PC is running perfectly. Even the hacked XP drivers for my old Voodoo card are working fine! My old Glide games like Diablo II and Half-Life work fine as well.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax)

[tee_bee_ay]

I posted this in the wrong place I think the first time --

Upon obediently attempting to install my XP Automatic Update of SP2, my computer or I did something wrong. Either it didn't download, or in my stupid 56bps mentality because nothing seemed to be installing, I terminated the connection before I should have.

In any case, my computer would then not go off, I had to do the hard shut-down. I turned it back on, and lo and behold the update icon is stuck in my taskbar perpetually stating "0% download complete".

I did a system restore, the icon's still there at 0% four days later. My media player doesn't seem to be working right either.

Help me get this thing working right again, PLEASE - I run a P4 notebook I-buddie.

Terri

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)