XPSP2 -- Anyone having troubles? | The Coffeehouse

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

Well, I opened my mouth over on my blog at http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/08/19.html#a8108 and some people are saying they are having troubles with Windows XPSP2. I wanna give them a place to report those troubles so that we can work on figuring them out. This is a good place and I'll send the feedback to the team.

Simo
With me it's a full-time job.

Perfect timing, just finished wrestling with SP2.

I hit a gotcha, rather than an issue. Looks like pre-SP2 when you share a directory the default access permissions are pretty much anyonecan do anything they like (a very hippy attitude).

Creating a share under the new SP2 regime, the default permission set is zero. I guess admins & owners have permissions to change access and errr..... that's it.

I did lose 20mins of my life figuring out the problem. But as far as I'm concerned, up the revolution.

imekon
Bah humbug!

scobleizer wrote:
Well, I opened my mouth over on my blog at http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/08/19.html#a8108 and some people are saying they are having troubles with Windows XPSP2. I wanna give them a place to report those troubles so that we can work on figuring them out. This is a good place and I'll send the feedback to the team.

XP SP2: not recommended. I'm saying this to all my friends and family. Purely because I'm hearing reports of problems out there, and you guys have already released a patch to SP2.

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

imekon: that's horrible advice. I wonder if all your friends and family come and ask you to clean off their spyware and viruses too (mine sure do, and everyone I've put XPSP2 on has stopped asking me why weird things keep happening).

XPSP2 fixes hundreds of problems and makes your system run better and far more securely too.

Cider
Daze-d & Confused

imekon wrote:

XP SP2: not recommended. I'm saying this to all my friends and family. Purely because I'm hearing reports of problems out there, and you guys have already released a patch to SP2.

You are basing your recommendations on reports in The Inquirer and The Register? Nice going. Do you also vote the way The Sun tells you to? They're all tabloid rags...

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

Here's a list of all the fixes that you'll get with Windows XP: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;811113

In fact, these are all fixes. So, if you don't have XPSP2 you have far more potential problems than if you upgraded.

Not to mention you won't have the increased security. The vastly improved wireless functionality. Or, if you have a Tablet PC, the vastly improved inking and recognition functionality.

imekon
Bah humbug!

scobleizer wrote:
imekon: that's horrible advice. I wonder if all your friends and family come and ask you to clean off their spyware and viruses too (mine sure do, and everyone I've put XPSP2 on has stopped asking me why weird things keep happening).

XPSP2 fixes hundreds of problems and makes your system run better and far more securely too.

This isn't the first time you've told me this is "bad advice".

I tell my friends not to run IE or OE, that will stop 99% of virus etc. dead. I also tell them to run a virus checker. It's not my fault if they don't listen to me and use IE and OE anyway, and still get virii.

In any case, what I have now is working perfectly well for me. Why should I upgrade to an unknown such as SP2. Just because you (Microsoft) say so!

imekon
Bah humbug!

Cider wrote:
imekon wrote:
XP SP2: not recommended. I'm saying this to all my friends and family. Purely because I'm hearing reports of problems out there, and you guys have already released a patch to SP2.

You are basing your recommendations on reports in The Inquirer and The Register? Nice going. Do you also vote the way The Sun tells you to? They're all tabloid rags...

Nope. Never heard of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and "prudence dictates never be an early adopter". As I said, I'm waiting to see what happens.

imekon
Bah humbug!

scobleizer wrote:
Here's a list of all the fixes that you'll get with Windows XP: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;811113

In fact, these are all fixes. So, if you don't have XPSP2 you have far more potential problems than if you upgraded.

Not to mention you won't have the increased security. The vastly improved wireless functionality. Or, if you have a Tablet PC, the vastly improved inking and recognition functionality.

I don't have any problems now, Robert. I've never been attacked by a virus, simply because I don't run the two well known holes that attract them.

I do have a firewall running now that is better than the one supplied with SP2. In fact, I have two. Please explain how SP2 is "increased security"?

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

>I tell my friends not to run IE or OE, that will stop 99% of virus etc. dead.

The latest viruses/attacks come through ports and not through email or Web. So, your advice is horrid. If you are running without a firewall you'll get hit.

Why should you upgrade? Look at the list of bugs we fixed. If you want to stay with what you got, I'm not going to stop you.

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

>As I said, I'm waiting to see what happens.

No problem with that. But when you tell other people to wait when they are potentially running unpatched machines without firewalls and without virus detectors, well, that simply is horrid advice.

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

Great, I'm glad you're running a firewall and you're avoiding troubles by running software that the criminals aren't targetting.

But, you're running software with hundreds of bugs that now have been fixed -- for free. You're running software that has less security (because if something nasty DID get through your firewalls and your "security by running non-targeted software" your system was compiled using old technology that allows more buffer overruns to happen).

Plus, you're missing out on the new wireless features which are much nicer than what you have. And, if you have a Tablet PC you're missing out on the dramatically improved inking/recognition technology.

Among other things.

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

>I do have a firewall running now that is better than the one supplied with SP2.

I assume you're using Zone Alarm.

Did you know that if you already have such a firewall that when you install XPSP2 it won't turn on the Windows firewall and will leave Zone Alarm in place?

So, if you already have a better firewall, you'll still have it after loading XPSP2, plus you'll have all the other security protections as well.

Frandsen

I dropped this in microsoft.public.windowsxp.general shortly after the release:

---
If I understand Q818332 correctly, a problem with ejecting computers should
be fixed in SP2. I've just installed SP2 and the problem persists.

The serenum.sys file on my machine is version 5.1.2600.2180, and the problem
should be fixed as early as 5.1.2600.1222.

Is it time for MS to take another look at this problem?
---

It hasn't been answered by a microsoftie, but then there's a lot of traffic over there.

eagle

Robert, how can you argue with the British Tech Tabloids?

Remember, they now use channel9 as a source for their juicy stories.

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

Eagle: good point!

AndyC

I've been testing SP2 since RC1 and have to say that the final release seems pretty solid to me.

Even some of the apps on the list (Virusscan 7 for example) work fine so I suspect the number of applications that actually break in a severe way is much less than some scaremongers would have us believe.

FWIW I definately recommend it to everyone and will be rolling it out here as soon as the guy responsible for our teaching labs has given the okay on the firewall settings.

Home users should definately be installing it.

mc717990

I've had pretty good luck with it thus far - an easy test was to go to weather.com and see if I got a popup - nope Smiley Course, this'll probably drive weather.com nuts.

Anyways, one issue I hit was with a program called track-it not being able to register a DLL file. It's looking for tibiz60.dll. This file exists in the \bin directory.

Is there any reason this app would run perfectly fine before upgrading to SP2 but now fail to start because it can't register that DLL?

This dll and app is located on a network drive if this makes any difference. The exact error message is: Unable to start Track-It! 6.0. Failed to register required dll: tibiz60.dll

Thanks!
Jason

imekon
Bah humbug!

scobleizer wrote:
>As I said, I'm waiting to see what happens.

No problem with that. But when you tell other people to wait when they are potentially running unpatched machines without firewalls and without virus detectors, well, that simply is horrid advice.

Where did I say that Robert?

All of my family run Zone Alarm and a virus checker.

imekon
Bah humbug!

scobleizer wrote:
>I tell my friends not to run IE or OE, that will stop 99% of virus etc. dead.

The latest viruses/attacks come through ports and not through email or Web. So, your advice is horrid. If you are running without a firewall you'll get hit.

Why should you upgrade? Look at the list of bugs we fixed. If you want to stay with what you got, I'm not going to stop you.

Various things attack through ports but that doesn't mean they gain access that way, unless there's a buffer overrun to exploit.

Where did I say anyone wasn't running with a firewall?

imekon
Bah humbug!

scobleizer wrote:
>I do have a firewall running now that is better than the one supplied with SP2.

I assume you're using Zone Alarm.

Did you know that if you already have such a firewall that when you install XPSP2 it won't turn on the Windows firewall and will leave Zone Alarm in place?

So, if you already have a better firewall, you'll still have it after loading XPSP2, plus you'll have all the other security protections as well.

I read somewhere one of the applications broken by SP2 is Zone Alarm - I'll have to see where I read that.

imekon
Bah humbug!

scobleizer wrote:
Great, I'm glad you're running a firewall and you're avoiding troubles by running software that the criminals aren't targetting.

But, you're running software with hundreds of bugs that now have been fixed -- for free. You're running software that has less security (because if something nasty DID get through your firewalls and your "security by running non-targeted software" your system was compiled using old technology that allows more buffer overruns to happen).

Plus, you're missing out on the new wireless features which are much nicer than what you have. And, if you have a Tablet PC you're missing out on the dramatically improved inking/recognition technology.

Among other things.

I'm running something that I know works. I can't say the same about SP2.

As for the Wireless features and Tablet PC, irrelevant. My laptop is running Linux and the wireless works just fine.

cerkit
Just another programmer

imekon wrote:

scobleizer wrote: imekon: that's horrible advice. I wonder if all your friends and family come and ask you to clean off their spyware and viruses too (mine sure do, and everyone I've put XPSP2 on has stopped asking me why weird things keep happening).

XPSP2 fixes hundreds of problems and makes your system run better and far more securely too.

This isn't the first time you've told me this is "bad advice".

I tell my friends not to run IE or OE, that will stop 99% of virus etc. dead. I also tell them to run a virus checker. It's not my fault if they don't listen to me and use IE and OE anyway, and still get virii.

In any case, what I have now is working perfectly well for me. Why should I upgrade to an unknown such as SP2. Just because you (Microsoft) say so!

Geez, enough with the IE is a virus magnet. I haven't gotten a virus in IE since I began using IE 3. IE doesn't get virii, people get virii.

SP2 has dramatically improved my machines. I, Mekon, there is one feature that should compell you to recommend SP2 to your "friends" - the fact that they can choose "No, and don't ask me again" when presented with ActiveX installers on the "seedy" sites that they frequent.

That is most likely the biggest cause for virii and spyware - when a website presents you with an ActiveX dialog and you choose "No", and it asks you multiple times in JavaScript until the average user is confused and clicks "Yes" so the darned dialog will go away.

That is social engineering at work, not a flaw of IE. ActiveX was introduced to relieve us from the obnoxious need to download and run an installer from the web just to get advanced functionality from our browser. The fact that the technology was used for harmful and disrespectful purposes is not Microsoft's fault.

The Interstate highway makes it easier for you to get to and from work, but can you blame the government when someone is careless or aggressive and causes an accident?

Microsoft is providing us with a service pack that will undo much of the "hippie love fest" trust that we all hoped the Internet would be about. But, the Internet is no longer just a place for intelligent engineers to share hypertext documents, it's a "commercial success". It went from being much like a sanitary laboratory to being like a public restroom in a subway station.

I urge you to at least disclose to your friends the possibility that there are features of SP2 that they may wish to take advantage of.

As a person that others look to to assist them with their computers, it is your responsibility to stay current with what is out there. If you cannot step up to that responsibility, perhaps it is your duty to inform them of your inability to effectively provide the highest level of support. Maybe it's time they started getting support from professionals.

Seriously, Microsoft has a lot more to lose if things go horribly wrong than you do. If something goes seriously bad with their technology, they'll lose more money in ten seconds than you'll see in your entire lifetime.

Cider
Daze-d & Confused

But didn't you say you are advising friends and family as well? Well, they will probably need the hundreds of fixes, could well need the wireless features and some might even have Tablet PCs. You are just scaremongering, in my opinion.

mminyard

Hi,

I just wanted to report that I have encountered a problem; the same one on 2 out of 10 installs I have done. (This has also been reported in the newsgroups.)

On startup, I get a blue screen and a message:

"Stop: c0000135 {unable to locate component}
This application has failed to start because winsrv was not
found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem."

The only way I have been able to recover is to do a repair install. That gets me back to SP1 plus all the other updates, but when I try SP2 again, I get the same results.

I did email Microsoft's SP2 help and they did reply with some steps. Basically, use recovery console to completely remove SP2, run SFC, boot into safe mode, delete the page file, and try again. They didn't say what was causing the problem. Right now, I can't lose more time to try this, at least until the weekend.

If anyone has any ideas though, I would be glad to hear them.

Generally, I'm in favor of installing SP2 as soon as possible, but I'm warning people to only do it when they have enough time available to recover if required. This is particularly significant for people like me in places where only dial-up access is available. It takes for ever to get all of the updates again.

Matt