Avoid sp2

[kylef]

Originally posted by: GimpyOne
Sure, the biggest company I'm having an issue with is called Dionex. After SP2 was installed, their system would no longer function. I completely disabled the firewall and the security center in the services menu as well as the NIC and it still has issues. Less than a day after I installed it I recieved an email from the company telling me not to and that they are trying to work on it. They are not sure what all of the problems are. They are supposedly working on a software update which should fix it in the next few weeks.

I think bsobel (and the rest of us) wanted more information about how, exactly, this network setup works. Not just that "it's called Dionex and it won't function, they said they're working on it."

I've tested many multi-homed boxes with Sp2 and they have worked great for me. What kind of app is used to talk to this Dionex instrument? What ports does it open, or protocols does it use?

If anyone around there is handy with Netmon, you can pretty easily diagnose network problems like this.

 

[TrentSteel]

Explorer keeps locking up on me since I installed SP2. It's annoying but not fatal, and the system usually recovers after I force it to quit. But for some reason some folders remain completely inaccessible unless I restart the machine, in spite of already having forced the frozen Explorer to quit. Explorer freezes up on the same folder(s) over and over unless I restart. Most other folders/disks seem to be accessible, but if you can't get at an entire disk and need to restart to regain access, it can be troublesome. Strange thing is, it's usually a different folder/disk with each restart. But for every Windows session, if a given directory causes a crash, it will inevitably continue to cause a crash. I've already gone through all the disks and partitions to make sure there are no errors or bad sectors, and the tests came back fine.

But the biggest problem I have is with CD/DVD writing. I already updated Nero 6 with the patch that supposedly renders it more compatible with SP2, but for some reason I still get random failed writes on both CD's and DVD's. And for some reason iTunes crashes whenever I so much as try to access the burning options, to say nothing of trying to burn music (which also freezes up the program). I'm using a Lite-on LDW-411S with the latest firmware, Athlon XP mobile 2400+ at 2.2GHz with idle temp at 35C, etc.

Thankfully I have Windows 2000 Pro on my secondary machine and laptop. It's refreshing.

 

[GimpyOne]

Well, it turns out I'm a dumba** and I'm not. The main problem I'm was having with SP2 was becuase while I shut down the new Security Center, I forgot to disable it in the services manager...so when I rebooted, the firewall started back up on me and I didn't notice. That fixed and I can now see my instruments.

On the other side of things, there still are issues with my software and SP2, but it isn't with the network support. It turns out they built their software on a client/server database system, and I am running both locally on the same computer. Some of the new bug "fixes" that SP2 has implemented render some of the 9001 certification capabilities they have put into the software unusable. Evidently if you are running them on multiple computers there isn't this problem, I'm not really sure why and of course, they won't tell me. Thankfully I'd don't use them so it isn't a problem for me, but may be for some people in industry.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Slogun

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: vegetation
SP2 working flawlessly with my system. Of course, I installed the SP2 on a fresh SP1 install. Everyone knows better than to install any service pack with a windows setup loaded down over the years -- that's guaranteed to ask for trouble.

Why? SPs can have issues with a few specific types of products, so MS makes general suggestions to remove antivirus software and some CDROM / filter drivers, but generally speaking it's a normal and safe thing to do.

dclive, You are quite right about a service pack update being a normal and safe thing to do. However, vegetation is also, imho, correct that a clean install is always better.

The same binaries are getting replaced either way. What do you hope to gain by saying a clean install is always better?

Fact is, many, if not most of us here at AT believe in an annual reformat/clean install of our OS, if not even more often than that. For convenience, I myself did SP2 as an update, but some annoying problems could not be resolved. I ended up honing my slipstreaming skills on a reformat.:beer:

That's a tremendous amount of unnecessary work, IMHO. Was there a specific problem that you were fixing by reformatting and reinstalling? If so, that's understandable, but generally speaking, just install SP2 over what you've got.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: TrentSteel
Explorer keeps locking up on me since I installed SP2. It's annoying but not fatal, and the system usually recovers after I force it to quit. But for some reason some folders remain completely inaccessible unless I restart the machine, in spite of already having forced the frozen Explorer to quit. Explorer freezes up on the same folder(s) over and over unless I restart. Most other folders/disks seem to be accessible, but if you can't get at an entire disk and need to restart to regain access, it can be troublesome. Strange thing is, it's usually a different folder/disk with each restart. But for every Windows session, if a given directory causes a crash, it will inevitably continue to cause a crash. I've already gone through all the disks and partitions to make sure there are no errors or bad sectors, and the tests came back fine.

But the biggest problem I have is with CD/DVD writing. I already updated Nero 6 with the patch that supposedly renders it more compatible with SP2, but for some reason I still get random failed writes on both CD's and DVD's. And for some reason iTunes crashes whenever I so much as try to access the burning options, to say nothing of trying to burn music (which also freezes up the program). I'm using a Lite-on LDW-411S with the latest firmware, Athlon XP mobile 2400+ at 2.2GHz with idle temp at 35C, etc.

Thankfully I have Windows 2000 Pro on my secondary machine and laptop. It's refreshing.

Explorer issue - remove 3rd party explorer plugins. Divx is said to be a bad one in SP2 until a bug is fixed, but it could be any 3rd party plugins. And I'd bet logging out and then logging in again, rather than restarting, would let you access those folders/drives.

RE: CDRW - check your filter drivers. MPS Reports can help with that - remove anything you don't absolutely need, hopefully by cleanly uninstalling it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: GimpyOne
Well, it turns out I'm a dumba** and I'm not. The main problem I'm was having with SP2 was becuase while I shut down the new Security Center, I forgot to disable it in the services manager...so when I rebooted, the firewall started back up on me and I didn't notice. That fixed and I can now see my instruments.

On the other side of things, there still are issues with my software and SP2, but it isn't with the network support. It turns out they built their software on a client/server database system, and I am running both locally on the same computer. Some of the new bug "fixes" that SP2 has implemented render some of the 9001 certification capabilities they have put into the software unusable. Evidently if you are running them on multiple computers there isn't this problem, I'm not really sure why and of course, they won't tell me. Thankfully I'd don't use them so it isn't a problem for me, but may be for some people in industry.

Well, that could be an instance of the localhost support that changed in XP SP2. MS restricted localhost loopback to only the single 127.0.0.1 IP address, any others in the 127.x.x.x block are totally blocked. The RFC on this could be considered unclear, and MS probably thought that they were erring on the side of security by doing this, although I personally suspect this to be a single code bug, because if the network stack is performing ingress filtering of source-IP-spoofed packets on all interfaces, then this shouldn't even be an issue. I'm guessing that they (mistakenly or intentionally) changed the subnet on the loopback adaptor from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 to 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.255.

So what happens is, some 3rd-party applications that use local network sockets to "talk" between components, that don't use 127.0.0.1 exactly, are probibited from communicating. MS does have a hotfix available, but you need to call their PSS to get it, it's not publically-available on their web site.

Here are some links to investigate that issue (Google "XP SP2 127.0.0.1"):
http://support.microsoft.com/d...x?scid=kb;EN-US;884020
http://forums.devshed.com/archive/t-174587

Interestingly, the second link seems to indicate that someone attempted to obtain the hotfix from MS for this, and it is no longer available, I would like to find out if that's true. I really can't fathom why this isn't available to the public for download yet, or that there isn't some registry-based workaround.

Edit: The plot thickens!
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=817293
http://www.webservertalk.com/message357981.html
That second link has a reference to KB844020, which when I attempt to access, doesn't come up.
Is this a secret, internal, KB article, or was it pulled? What is contained within?
A Google search for the mysterous 844020 KB article turns up nothing, and no cached entry either.
Edit 2: Nevermind, the "missing" KB article is really 884020, the same one linked above, the referenced thread just typo'ed it. Sorry for the confusion. Doh!

 

[TGHI]

I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but I believe that it was on news.com. They said that starting August 16 (of this year), you have 8 months to avoid SP2, then you will be forced to download and install it.

 

[TGHI]

....which is why I use W2K.... ;P

 

[stash]

You won't be forced to do anything. You have control over how Automatic Updates is configured.

 

[fritzfield]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: TrentSteel
Explorer keeps locking up on me since I installed SP2. It's annoying but not fatal, and the system usually recovers after I force it to quit. But for some reason some folders remain completely inaccessible unless I restart the machine, in spite of already having forced the frozen Explorer to quit. Explorer freezes up on the same folder(s) over and over unless I restart. Most other folders/disks seem to be accessible, but if you can't get at an entire disk and need to restart to regain access, it can be troublesome. Strange thing is, it's usually a different folder/disk with each restart. But for every Windows session, if a given directory causes a crash, it will inevitably continue to cause a crash. I've already gone through all the disks and partitions to make sure there are no errors or bad sectors, and the tests came back fine.

But the biggest problem I have is with CD/DVD writing. I already updated Nero 6 with the patch that supposedly renders it more compatible with SP2, but for some reason I still get random failed writes on both CD's and DVD's. And for some reason iTunes crashes whenever I so much as try to access the burning options, to say nothing of trying to burn music (which also freezes up the program). I'm using a Lite-on LDW-411S with the latest firmware, Athlon XP mobile 2400+ at 2.2GHz with idle temp at 35C, etc.

Thankfully I have Windows 2000 Pro on my secondary machine and laptop. It's refreshing.

Explorer issue - remove 3rd party explorer plugins. Divx is said to be a bad one in SP2 until a bug is fixed, but it could be any 3rd party plugins. And I'd bet logging out and then logging in again, rather than restarting, would let you access those folders/drives.

RE: CDRW - check your filter drivers. MPS Reports can help with that - remove anything you don't absolutely need, hopefully by cleanly uninstalling it.

What IS the problem with Divx? Does it prevent SP2 from installing? I have tried all kinds of things but my SP2 installation freezes upon reboot and I have to go into safe mode to do a system restore. I have DIVX on my machine.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Edit: The plot thickens!
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=817293
http://www.webservertalk.com/message357981.html
That second link has a reference to KB844020, which when I attempt to access, doesn't come up.
Is this a secret, internal, KB article, or was it pulled? What is contained within?
A Google search for the mysterous 844020 KB article turns up nothing, and no cached entry either.
Edit 2: Nevermind, the "missing" KB article is really 884020, the same one linked above, the referenced thread just typo'ed it. Sorry for the confusion. Doh!

hehe, yes 844020 is a MS partner KB article. Sorry to let you down but It's completely unrelated to anything SP2. It's Solomon related actually.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Coro Dominicano
Am i able to completly avoid Sp2 for a few years, or new programs are going to have Sp2 reguirments?

personally, I just don't really care to upgrade. why fix what's not broken? xp sp1 works fantastic on my dell, and it's not moving until it has to

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: Coro Dominicano
Am i able to completly avoid Sp2 for a few years, or new programs are going to have Sp2 reguirments?

personally, I just don't really care to upgrade. why fix what's not broken? xp sp1 works fantastic on my dell, and it's not moving until it has to

Thousands of people thought this same thing... just before they were hit with Sasser (and a host of other worms).

It's time to upgrade, folks. SP2 your box, and then if there *are* any problems, *then* troubleshoot the issues. Microsoft will help.

 

[bsobel]

Thousands of people thought this same thing... just before they were hit with Sasser (and a host of other worms). It's time to upgrade, folks. SP2 your box, and then if there *are* any problems, *then* troubleshoot the issues. Microsoft will help.

Well said. I *really* like having you around these parts

 

[erikistired]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: Coro Dominicano
Am i able to completly avoid Sp2 for a few years, or new programs are going to have Sp2 reguirments?

personally, I just don't really care to upgrade. why fix what's not broken? xp sp1 works fantastic on my dell, and it's not moving until it has to

Thousands of people thought this same thing... just before they were hit with Sasser (and a host of other worms).

It's time to upgrade, folks. SP2 your box, and then if there *are* any problems, *then* troubleshoot the issues. Microsoft will help.

hrrrm, freedom force no longer runs post sp2, can MS help me with that?

irrational are thankfully working on a patch, just taking too long.

 

[sunase]

Wow, just installed SP2 yesterday and the machine boots lightning fast. Anyone else notice a change there? Besides that the machine was randomly locking up for the first day, but then I updated every single driver, bios, and program that auto-loads and it's running fine. If you use Daemon Tools definitely update that beforehand since they mention SP2 lock ups on their site. Definitely going fresh install next time, I would have known who the culprit was as soon as it was installed.

 

[footbal07]

ive been using sp2 for a while now with no probs. im just running kerio firewall and symantec av and havent had any security issues as of date.

 

[Slogun]

My SP2 has been running pretty well since my clean install.

I don't have a lot of apps installed so far.

One annoyance is my motherboard monitor doesn't load consistently.

 

[overclock]

I just built an Athlon 64 3200+ system. My FRESH installs of Windows are good for the most part. But when I try to install Norton Systemworks Pro 2003 the antivirus messes up big time along with other programs.

There is a known problem with Pinnacle Studio 9 with loading mpeg files.

XP SP2 works great until I start installing programs. Back to SP1a for me. Hopefully they will release SP2a soon.

 

[Tbirdkid]

cant wait for my 64 bit processor and mobo and ram... windows xp is sooooo out. too many bugz and crap. tired of it all. bill can bite my ##$%RAWFASDRWETRFDASERWERASDFwerawsdfsdrwer.