I'm thinking of putting SP2 on my Windows XP Home powered PC, but I've read on here and on other forums that is breaks things on your PC.

Can anyone tell me their own experiences of installing Service Pack 2 and whether I have anything to be concerned/wary of in doing so?

Any doubts Rich have a read here (http://www.theeldergeek.com/service_pack_2.htm) before you install.. Lets you know what SP2 is and what effect it will have on your machine :thumbsup:

Also, have a look at this thread (http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15328&highlight=service+pack)

Originally posted by Rich
I'm thinking of putting SP2 on my Windows XP Home powered PC, but I've read on here and on other forums that is breaks things on your PC.

Can anyone tell me their own experiences of installing Service Pack 2 and whether I have anything to be concerned/wary of in doing so?

Yes, only confliction was Windows' own vs. Sygate.

Alex

is is that windows xp sp2 stops things on your machine which are ILLEGAL and you should have on there.

Mine took less than an hour and it all worked afterwards although it did try to kick out mcafee as the default firewall...

My sister had a nightmare problem and she lost loads of files. Her machine wouldn't start and she spent ages on the phone with tech support. They had to walk her through a complete reinstall which obviously took ages. I looked on the net for her and found similar nasty stories but there was no consistency, some had no or few problems others had extreme problems. My sister is not a happy bunny as a lot of work files don't seem to be there anymore but she's hoping that they can be recovered. One thing tech support did tell her was that it could take up to an hour and a half to load [which seems ridiculous] and if she turned her machine off whilst it was loading that could of caused her problems, the only thing was that she only had a featureless blue screen showing which wasn't very helpful to her at the time.

Originally posted by Rich
I'm thinking of putting SP2 on my Windows XP Home powered PC, but I've read on here and on other forums that is breaks things on your PC.

Can anyone tell me their own experiences of installing Service Pack 2 and whether I have anything to be concerned/wary of in doing so?

I have installed sp2 on both my pc's with no real problems at all. A little bit of preparation and a lot of crossed fingers and you should be fine.
To prepare for sp2 i started by making a backup of my computer.
Then i stopped ALL the services i did not need running by unchecking them in msconfig.
Then i did a disk defragmentation in safe mode

Lastly i touched a piece of wood constantly with my crossed fingers and prayed to Bill Gates :hihi:

ive installed sp2 on my system had no probs as yet been on about a month now

i've installed it on 3 systems, 2 were fine, one had the rpc service disabled (which is essential for the system) and it took me several days to recover it.

Originally posted by WALLBUILDER
My sister had a nightmare problem and she lost loads of files. Her machine wouldn't start and she spent ages on the phone with tech support. They had to walk her through a complete reinstall which obviously took ages. I looked on the net for her and found similar nasty stories but there was no consistency, some had no or few problems others had extreme problems.
There are cases out there and it's possible to have a problem.. on the whole though, it's generally advisable (sorry to bolt to stable door after the horses bolted) to get a full backup of your vital files before doing anything like applying a major service pack if you have any vital or important data on the machine.

My sister is not a happy bunny as a lot of work files don't seem to be there anymore but she's hoping that they can be recovered. One thing tech support did tell her was that it could take up to an hour and a half to load [which seems ridiculous] and if she turned her machine off whilst it was loading that could of caused her problems, the only thing was that she only had a featureless blue screen showing which wasn't very helpful to her at the time.
The application time for the service pack can be anywhere from 25 minutes to over 2 hours depending on the machines CPU and RAM... so that's about right..

Anything causing problems, mid update is not going to help though, and that includes power spikes, kids yanking out cables and the like...


To be fair to Microsoft, they have tried to anticipate problems as much as possible by allowing you to cancel the installation right up to the point before new files are added... and refusing to install if you're on a laptop with battery power only.

All in all though my experience has been pretty positive.

Updated Mine months ago no problems at all infact runs better now than before. All windows operating systems went out to the public with bugs and the updates are the only way they can fix them.:thumbsup:

Originally posted by Deejay

Also, have a look at this thread (http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15328&highlight=service+pack)
Search next time newb :P

XP-SP2 runs fine now on my machine,but the security center p****s me off!!!!!!!:mad:

Originally posted by mr craig
Search next time newb :P

XP-SP2 runs fine now on my machine,but the security center p****s me off!!!!!!!:mad:

Why does the security center p**s you off?

The way it pops up saying my pc is at risk everytime i turn it on.i I really know its not much but it still p****s me off!!!

Originally posted by mr craig
The way it pops up saying my pc is at risk everytime i turn it on.i I really know its not much but it still p****s me off!!!

Click on the security center icon in Control panel. On the left of the screen you need to select 'Change the way security center alerts me'. From here you can turn the alerts off ;)

Ha ha,nice one,i'm glad i've sorted that! Any ideas on how to stop it beeping everytime i open a web pages,thats the other thing that p****s me off!!

Not too sure on this one as i use AOL (for the minuite).

It is possibly something to do with the popup blocking that was built in to sp2. It may be that it is beeping to let you know that it has blocked a popup appearing on your screen.

Try this: Go to control panel and open internet options. Then go to the privacy tab. From there go to the popup blocker settings. In here you will see a box checked that says "Play a sound when a popup is blocked". Try unchecking this box.

Good luck ;)

Originally posted by Bikertec
All windows operating systems went out to the public with bugs and the updates are the only way they can fix them.:thumbsup:

It's not only Windows & Operating Systems that are shipped with bugs. Almost all software will have bugs in the code (humans wrote it, after all), or will need re-writing as bugs in OSs are discovered & corrected.

It's like now, I'm having to re-write some of the programs I wrote for the Win 95/98 platform to work under XP.