Replies

I'm not talking about a professional IT environment. The average FR home user doesn't have your resources. ;-p

http://v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/v5consumer/default.aspx?ln=en-us

now they have most of em :P

I was at a technet meeting a few months ago about sp2 and one of the slides they were showing was about "days between virus release and days between patch and days between containment" there are STILL folks out there infected with slammer who have NOT installed the patch released almost a YEAR ago.. most of the viruses are now reverse engineered out of the patches since most patches now come out BEFORE a virus... they take a look at the hole that gets fixed and exploit the hole targeting people who dont load their updates.

www.kaspersky.com free 30 day trial. i suggest everyone scan themselves with the extended database enabled and then uninstall the program (like i said.. it KILLLLLLLSSSS your performance)

but your right, these are home users that dont have time to keep current, microsoft knows that, thats why sp2 nags you to turn on auto updates so that you dont have to worry about it. (feature not in windows 98.......)

"I've only found virus scanners to be of marginal value. Detecting intrustion AFTER infection is pretty bad timing. I just don't trust these tools to adequately restore a compromised system. They're primarily useful in letting you know when you're already screwed."

try kaspersky or panda, even tho nav is the most popular, its the worst one right along side mcafee. Like i said before, nav lets you know when your infected.. just look and see when nav stops running :)

keep on rockin bush2000 maby one day the world will have a safer computing enviroment.

A question for you both if you would please?

So, it's been a few additional months and I'm wondering was there ever a genuine problem with XP SP2, and if so (or not), is it now ready for prime time?

I have a remote friend (computer illiterate) who had problems upgrading from XP to XP SP2 - her MSN.com ISP support stopped working altogether. The MSN tech supp folks told her to back off SP2, she did, everything worked as before. She was told by MSN tech supp:

After 'repeatedly' calling MSN I found someone who suggested removing SP2. He told me he had countless calls with similar problems that began after they installed SP2. Off the record, he said he didn't download SP2 onto his personal computer. He did say Microsoft was addressing it's compatibility with other anti-viruses - Norton, etc. and was waiting until it was more perfected

She previously ran Adaware & SpyBot S&D and Norton ant-virus but switched to McAfee as she was told it was more 'MSN compatible'.

She is now wondering if she should re-attempt the SP2 upgrade.

Have there been any patches to XP SP2 that ostensibly fix upgrade problems, or has it remained static since this thread was last posted, back in Oct 2004?

FWIW, I run W2K Pro SP4 with ZoneAlarm Pro & AVG, Opera, and Eudora. So most of the easy virus and Spybot holes are plugged for me. I've only had 1 virus (trapped) and 1 BSOD in 4 years. So, I'm somewhat sympathetic to the argument that there was nothing wrong with XP SP2 if one keeps their system clean and maintained, but OTOH, I don't have XP and have heard a number of problems with it (similar to the early days of W2K - when I still ran NT - I stay back of the 'bleeding edge').

Thanks for any updated advice/help.