My WD machine now has 1GB of RAM and I’m just about to upgrade it from Win ME to XP-SP2. I hope it proves to be fairly painless!
Before anyone asks…WD doesn’t need 1GB of RAM. I’m running other graphically intensive apps on the machine like Digital Atmosphere, GeoSatSignal, etc, so it was always suffering a little with just 512MB. I find it a little frightening though that the machine now has enough RAM in it to hold 50 copies of my first ever hard disk! It doesn’t seem long ago since I thought that a 1GB hard disk was something to marvel at.
Im praying for you, since upgrading over the top of a dos shell to the NT world , can have its moments!!! On the Brightside one LESS ME OUT THERE IN THIS WORLD.
I have always wondered how bad(as in system performence rather than the process) it was upgrading from win 98/ME to win 2000/xp. MS says that it is better to do a clean install. :?
good luck to you.
but i do not understand why you install sp2.
if you have a good firewall and a open source browser and mail prog.
you do not need this sp2.
best regards
vossen
After I got over the faulty CD drive and a long wait (approx 65 minutes for the upgrade) it all went very smoothly indeed. Performance seems fine. WD and Digital Atmosphere started up automatically once the upgrade was finished. It was late when I finished the upgrade, so I went to bed straight afterwards and the system is still running without problems this morning
Why SP2? Well why not? I’ve been running it since the beta versions appeared and it’s not caused any problems at all. I do have other defence mechanisms in place, but just because you have a burgular alarm doesn’t mean you should leave all your house doors unlocked. If you study IT security you’ll see the phrase ‘defence in depth’ mentioned time after time. SP2 is just another level of defence. I must admit to being puzzled about the reactions to SP2. Lots of people moaned at MS for not being focussed on security and that they left lots of things open that should be closed. They fixed that with SP2 and now lots of people moan at MS for closing lots of holes that they want left open.
Finally…open source does not mean secure. Linux is open source, yet there are are still plenty of security holes being plugged in that every month! Open source just means the code is available to you to look at if you want. How many people here have ever looked at ANY of the Linux source code…or would even understand what it said if you did look at it?
hi Chris
i just ask this question, as the topic is > wish me luck
i do not install sp2, as it was a bingo game, to see what software will work and what does not.
and i do not have the time anymore> to sit down and to reconfigure windows, i dit it so many times.
my slogan is now> never touch a running system :lol:
security is ok > if the firewall is right, as sp2 is just a security patch and not a performing thing, i just leave it as it is.
sure open source is not perfect, but saver > thats all.
The ‘wish me luck’ was because there have been a number of threads where people have apparently had problems after upgrading to XP and/or SP2. My own experience is that SP2 is pretty good. I’ve got three installations of it now which have all worked out of the box and no software that I use has broken as a result of installing it. I know a number of other people who have installed it and none of them have mentioned any problems.
Never trust in a just firewall! The network I work on has very strict security applied to it and therefore our firewalls are configured for maximum security. We still apply patches like SP2 though. There are many forms of indirect attack vectors that your firewall will never stop. As two examples, I assume you allow email and web pages to get through your firewall. If so, unless you are running a very strange firewall, your PC will still receive viruses in email and web based script attacks. Even non-MS open source browsers and email clients suffer from security issues, so you can never be too safe.
good to hear you have had no issues with SP2 Chris - bet you held your breath for a bit - what would you have said if it had screwed up your system somehow?
I am going nowhere near it - heard too many horror stories from friends and colleagues. One friend cannot use IE at all now since he installed SP2.
Each PC and system is different - configurations are never the same. You just never know what will happen when putting in an important patch like SP2. It may cause no problems, it may cause major headaches.
My motto? “if it isn’t broke, don’t try and fix it”
my system (XP SP1) runs sweetly and that is the way I wish to keep it. Of course the only time I would expect SP2 on a system is on a brand new PC from a manufacturer.
SP2 is basically a huge security patch. Here are some stats:
Friends and colleagues who have installed SP2 and had problems: Zero
Friends and colleagues who have suffered security problems (virus, etc): Many
There are no guarantees that SP2 will prevent every known exploit, but a machine protected by SP2 is less susceptible to exploits which can only be good. It’s a free world so you can choose not to install SP2, but don’t expect any sympathy from me if your PC is taken over by a spammer who then uses it to spam me :x
i have not heard of any problems with SP2 myself.
Its on the wifes/kids pc, no problems there
(i run windows and its auto updating with patches from microsoft)
Most people arn’t seeing problems with service pack 2 UNLESS you use IIS. Then you can have a heck of a time getting your sites back on line. They shut down nearly all privileges so it’s up to the administrator to open it back up.
SP2 does shut down a lot of privileges. A lot of security minded people had been moaning on about how MS doesn’t care about such things. MS reacted by shutting down things that really shouldn’t be open and then other people complain that privileges are too locked down. That just goes to show that you can’t please all of the people all of the time!
However, if you’re running something as complex as IIS then you should really understand how to set it up securely. If you’re running IIS that’s accessible to the public on the Internet then you really really really should understand how to set it up securely. If you’re using it to host public web sites that matter, then you should test upgrades like SP2 off-line before applying them to the live server. We’ve not deployed SP2 at work yet. It’s going through a rigorous testing process because we don’t want to find out about problems after it’s been deployed to thousands of machines. Finally, if you’re hosting public web sites on IIS then you probably shouldn’t be doing it on XP. XP is a client operating system that has a number of limitations when it comes to running IIS. The correct place to run IIS is on a server (suitably hardened to stop the hackers attacking it).
Fair enough Mr Admin - I don’t expect sympathy from anyone. But I hope I am as secure as I can be with my firewall, and email antivirus and all the umpteen Windows update security patches I have downloaded over the months (which I gather is what SP2 is anyway but all rolled up into one, plus the new annoying firewall that likes to block everything, and the security centre). So perhaps my system would cope with SP2 ok - but I don’t know your friends/family and you don’t know mine. I prefer to go on what I have personally heard - so yes I will take the chance and continue to run SP1 plus any further Windows Update - like many of my IT savvy friends are doing as well, as well as people on here, like “vossen”. Only I can decide if I wan’t to install SP2 based on info I gather.
And I have heard of PCs not running IIS but normal everyday stuff that get screwed up by SP2 being installed - it just depends on who built the system and installed XP in the first place I guess? shrug
And before long I guess I will have a new PC with SP2 already installed and tested ok so all the worry is taken away from me.
And if some spam did appear to come from my system then I am sorry but that’s just the way it is these days - I am sure your spam filter will sort it out. Spam is a nuisance that we just have to deal with.
Anyway - not worth arguing over - as long as our respective systems continue to chug along nicely.
Well, since you and Chris both blessed SP2 I guess I’m all out of excuses for not installing it now. Maybe I’ll give it a try at the weekend.
Just posted over at slashdot, Microsoft bought Giant Software www.giantcompany.com/who are big in the spyware detection business, so maybe we’ll see that in SP3.
It helps if the CD drive hasn’t died since it was last used.
