You wouldn't usually 'notice' a worthwile difference; in fact, your computer might slow down. SP2 is mostly a collection of security updates that patch up horrible backdoors that exist in pre-SP2 XP. Granted, there's still some security holes after SP2, which is why you should run Windows or Microsoft Update once a month. Unless you have a computer that isn't connected to the internet, there really is no reason you shouldn't install SP2.

Okay, I admit there are a FEW hardware issues that could appear with SP2, but those are limited to a very small number of hardware configurations and is due to nonstandard components, not really Microsoft's fault in my opinion.

 

First things first... Before upgrading to SP2 you need to make sure that you do a complete virus scan and spyware scan.. Also make sure you don't have any hardware problems in device manager... I have installed SP2 on many machines with no issues following thess simple steps.. If spyware or virus junk is running in the background then that is usually what causes problems..

One other thing to remember is after upgrading to SP2 you can't use your SP1 disks to repair windows.. It will really get confused and screw things up..

 

me to but it's not my first round of beta testing thanks to ms technet. i don't find to many bugs, but you are correct they are there. thats what beta testing is all about helping debug.
as to adding sp2 go for it. but remember 1 virus scan and 1 firewall

 

This thread isn't really about speculating Vista, but I would bet a full version of the software won't be available until at least the end of '06. And even then, it won't have many of the features they promised during the product announcement.

Getting back to SP2, you only need to run it if you're connected to the internet, IMHO. So unless you're posting from your toaster (your IM client just told me that your pop tarts are done, btw) or using another OS, up to SP2.

The first versions of SP2 were a little buggier than what is out there now. I have a lab of 20 Dell P4 Optiplex machines that are about 4 years old and running XP Pro. When SP2 first dropped, I installed it and had crazy blue screens, say one in four. Part of that was probably due in part to the lousy state of Windows on those machines in the first place. Tried again about 3 months later and things went much, much better.

 

I installed SP2 a while back and like Howdy posted...it repaired a problem with random internet disconnect between my pc and my Netgear, wired, router. This was Netgear's solution to my problem after a call to their tech dept.
Now I have video card issues.......no more ATI chipsets for me.

 

For those of you that bought Windows XP with the SP1 package, and you have to reload windws from the disc, how do you accomplish this? I am told that you cannot reload windows XP with the SP1 package onto a computer that has upgraded to SP2. Any thoughts?

 

Hmmmmmmmm. I remember going down this road, before.
Yup. . . . My pcs like NVidia cards.

 

asus mb here with a ati card no problems

 

What you need to do in this case is to reformat the hard drive (save your files first). Then reinstall the disks that came with the PC. Setup hardware then upgrade to SP2.. After the upgrade then reinstall antivirus software and anything else.

The other option is to buy the full XP SP2 install cd. But Bill Gates is rich enough, so I don't recommend this unless absolutely necessary.

 

Thank You. I was hoping there was an easier(or cheaper) way. Has anybody done any slipstreaming to update a SP1 disc?

 

You must have WANTED IE loaded. And lets see you delete IE***** from your hard disk. Or disable system file protect. Or a host of other Microsoft "features".

 

Actually the easiest thing to do is create a disk image using Norton Ghost or any other similar program.. You can burn it to a CD or DVD.. It has taken up to 11 CD's to create one full drive image or 2 DVD's. There are ways to create images that fit on one CD, but they are cheap enough.

I usually do this on my computers right after I install the basic software and hardware or when they are new. This way I can always go back to this starting point then recover my data files. It save a lot of time.

 

I have no great love of MS, but the fact is I've used 3 different firewalls and the one that came with SP2 is the first that hasn't crashed or showed noticable slowdown. I have no great love for IE, but I usually have 5+ IE windows open at once and can still run photoshop, excel and word without it crashing. I tried Firefox, I mean I really tried it. It's kind of glitchy and while I'm sure some prefer to use it, I'm happy running all my IE windows maximized and Alt-tabbing to change. I still run firefox once in a while and I have a couple web pages on a linux host. It could be worse.

Take Windows 3.0 and GEM. If GEM had been a little flashier....

I mean, who has heard of names like Lee Lorenzen and Gary Kildall? Basically nobody, other than us guys that were dreaming of more than a meg of ram back in the early 80's. If these guys had prevailed a GUI would be just that. They were nice and thought if someone wanted software riding on top - so what? I did my part and bought GEM, (but I also had 3.0)

Everyone has heard of Bill Gates and Paul Allen. They just had a flashier product that appealed to more than number crunchers writing FORTRAN in their spare time. They were also ruthless...
Bills philosophy from the very beginning was that a royalty should be paid for any software that rode on "his" OS. So, in his perfect world any time you download a program, you would pay him. (If you think about how much stuff gets downloaded on all the worlds harddrives daily - Probably keeps Gates up at night, stressing over the money he didn't get.)

This didn't happen, fortunately. When I have to go through and disable things like IM, it's more of a snub than an inconvenience - I know it could have been different.

 

I have a HP 504 Pavilion 2gig WinXP SP2 Home Edition that we traded for from a friend earlier this year. He barely used it before getting a faster machine and had it boxed away with SP 1 originally. He is a techguy who loaded in the SP2 and added more RAM before giving it to us knowing that I did alot of online research for the business. When not running the Runegame website/playing the game online.

Just before getting it, I read all I could about about WinXP and SP2 as my former machine was Win98se. Yep, some of those early SP2 packs were buggy but the version he installed was the latest. I missed some of the 98 workings but soon became used to using WinXP. I am glad for automatic security downloads and firewall the SP 2 offers. Had my share of hijacks, trojans and malware with the 98 and having to root them out that I do not want to repeat. And I did use anti spyware in it.

The only problem I ever had was with the Norton that came with the newer machine. The registry was out of date and it was a memory hog. Just slowwwwed it down. Since I use AVG anyway, just removed the Norton and the computer runs fine now.

 

yup, download SP2 from microsoft , then download nlite from
http://www.nliteos.com/
It'll slipstream it and make an ISO you can burn..
It'll also integrate any microsoft updates you want... I did an install with an updated version and wrote down all the updates that the windows update site found for my system.... all 31 of them!!