XP SP-2 RC 2 Is Out...

[Jason P]

The Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP-2) Release Candidate 2 Preview is out now for the brave (you can get it at http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/1...C9FA8/xpSP2.exe ), and here's a brief rundown of my experience so far:

The previous RC (couple months back) toasted my machine - it acted exactly like it had the Blaster worm or one of its variants and nothing would stop it from going into a perpetual reboot cycle. I had pretty much the normal office and multimedia software that a moderate computer junkie would have. This is on a Frankenstein AMD Athlon 2400+/512 Megs RAM/Etc./bla/bla/bla machine cobbled together with some things old, new, borrowed and maybe even blue.

So... I then did a fresh Windows install and did all the stuff a good boy does (firewall - don't recall if it was ZA or Sygate; antivirus - tried it with Norton; installed SP1 and every single update there was before installing SP2 and finally connecting to the internet) and the same thing still happened. Everyone else it happened to posted on forums around the world, only to have people tell them that they were idiots and had Blaster. I didn't, and I bet a lot of them didn't either. Did a fresh install and did not try SP2 again.

With RC2, everything's fine. I've rebooted a few times and tried every program on my computer and it's solid as a rock. So far. Don't know what's changed since the first RC though I saw someone murmer about an lsass.exe bug being fixed and that MAY have been the culprit in my case. I never received an answer from my bug report for RC1 so I may never know.

I still wouldn't try it on a machine that I couldn't afford the time and energy to format and reinstall on, but I have no complaints at all.

The new Security Center feature isn't recognizing Sygate Pro or PC-Cillin, but that's to be expected, I'm sure. I'd bet it will be at least a few months before all the antivirus and firewall vendors are in sync with this new feature. For those who are nuts enough to try a beta service pack, I would imagine having Windows keep tabs on their antivirus and firewall programs isn't a high priority anyway. I just turn off the alerts and go about my business as usual.

For those who are a bit fuzzier about security (almost everyone, in my experience), the built-in Windows firewall has been beefed up somewhat and it looks like it has provisions for blocking outgoing bad traffic as well as incoming. Personally, I would suggest only leaving it on long enough to install a real firewall like ZoneAlarm, Sygate or Tiny and switch. But it is VERY improved. There is no built-in antivirus protection but it will happily bug a newbie about it and walk them through the steps of getting one chosen, installed and updated. Very cool, I think. Looks like it will even walk you through the freebie ones, so they seem to be trying to be fair about educating the user about the wide variety of choices.

The extra security features in IE are great (built in popup blocker for those who don't already have Google toolbar or something, and some stricter default settings for Active X that should have been in place from day one), but to be honest this is the first time I've used IE for anything but Windows Update in a couple years anyway and it wouldn't convince me to switch (from Opera). But for those who don't know any better or for God-knows-what reason actually PREFER that monster, I'm sure life will be safer. Hell, I may spend less time "fixing" people's "broken" computers someday...

Speaking of "broken" computers, SP2 disables a lot of the security and privacy problems that used to be enabled by default - Unplug and Play, Messenger (NOT MSN Messenger, and I think you guys had this talk already) and the like. In fact, there are several areas where MS seems to be risking the wrath of new users (trying to be nice, here) who expect unsafe processes and Active X controls to be turned on by default. If you want to do something unsafe now, you have to work a little harder at it and know how to do it. I approve.

Anyway, for those who don't mind taking the chance of having to do a complete overhaul of their system next weekend, the new Service Pack Beta is available and in my case did NOT trash my machine again. Resource usage and memory usage are the same and I see no difference in network activity or stability in any other area.

I'm sure there's someone else out there who can't wait and always tries the new stuff before it's safe to do it... keep in mind that my machine does nothing extremely important and Windows is on its own partition so nothing but Windows itself would die if I screw it up... this means, if you're not a daredevil and are unable/unwilling to rebuild from the ground up, you should wait until someone who knows what they're doing comes over to walk you through it. It looks like the final version is only a couple months away anyway.

[Mister P-Mosh]

I've had some major computer problems lately, just getting XP to install on a new PC. I've given up and installed Mandrake Linux real quick, but I'm going to change to Fedora I think to get a more modern version.

Microsoft screwed me over for the last time!

[Jason P]

I switched to Mandrake myself for a while and loved it. Then tried dual-boot with Windows 2000 to get back some Windows programs I wanted to run (I couldn't figure the Gimp out to save my life and missed Photoshop, for one). I never did play with Wine to use my Windows stuff - so much Linux stuff requires more dedication than I want to give after looking at a computer all day at work. Besides, I was in a cult at the time and didn't have time for things like that. Had to move the Word.

Then I tried XP and I'm back on Winblows. Though the new Xandros ( http://www.xandros.com ) is very user friendly and comes with Opera and other goodies already installed, so I'll be trying that in VMWare when I feel like exploring. The free version of Xandros is available only in a bittorrent, but it should be a pretty darned fast download. I did try Lycoris a few weeks ago in VMWare but getting it to work with all of my hardware proved to be annoying for someone just looking to dabble. I think a newer version would have served my purposes better but I didn't want to spend the money just to experiment.

Anyway, I wouldn't mind hearing how Fedora is working for you. I played a bit with an older Red Hat at work once and liked what I saw but never took it home. A friend at work is using FreeBSD and I like what I see except for the hours upon hours he put in finding drivers and configuring everything. Life's too short...