hey guys

thanks for all the info. i knew sp2 could pose a few probs but i think im one of the lucky ones. no problems and downloaded in half an hr.

thanks for the info dlh.

Oh i recommend un-installing most programms if you can, because i had only a few programms working after installing it. Northn might not work after installing SP2 so be prepared.

Man i remember getting the green beta cd of SP2, it was going to be relesed in like 4 months... Mand that was the days when i had better.... Now i cant wait to get longhorn beta... :cheesy:

I don't know what version ZoneAlarm is at now, but according to a link posted earlier in this thread, versions 3.7 - 5.0.590 are not a good idea with SP2:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=884130&product=windowsxpsp2

Thought I should mention that before everyone went to ZoneAlarm, thinking they were safe as far as a better firewall than SP2's, but still went ahead and upgraded to SP2, anyway, and found themselves with problems.

Have found that the ATI AIW Radeon 9200 driver I use (Catalyst 4.10) is not XP SP2 compatible (get a black screen about 30 secs. after log-in), and neither are any of the updated Catalysts from 4.11 and later, up to 5.5. Have heard it could actually require a motherboard BIOS flash, but haven't researched it thoroughly yet.

To that guy with the Win98 CD thing and partitioning the drive, if you are still monitoring this thread: Anytime you re-partition a drive you are going to be performing a "clean install" because your partition table is what tracks how your drive is set-up and how it sees the data, and re-doing this resets all of that, requiring a re-format that should have occurred during your XP installation (not required separately if installing XP from image or CD). All of your data previously will have been lost, along with programs, as you would have seen.

Have found that the ATI AIW Radeon 9200 driver I use (Catalyst 4.10) is not XP SP2 compatible (get a black screen about 30 secs. after log-in), and neither are any of the updated Catalysts from 4.11 and later, up to 5.5. Have heard it could actually require a motherboard BIOS flash, but haven't researched it thoroughly yet.

Strange, mine here work. If i remember i had read that u have to un-install it, and then istall the new one from ati, and not an update from your version...

Please tell me what ATI card and Catalyst version you are using. If you're using a Radeon AIW 9200, maybe I can do as you suggest so I can get it to work if you could tell me what Catalyst version to use - none of the others past 4.10, I believe, come out and say they support the 9200, even if it might be backward compatible from the later video cards. I'd just like to know what Catalyst is supposed to work before I do it, and if I have to uninstall my display driver and/or video controllers first, then that's just what I have to do (because an in-place upgrade was what I had been doing before, and indeed what I may need to stop doing to get it to work :) ).

I'll Make sure to keep it in mind!

Just a quick note for those of you who haven't done SP-2 and are still on a modem: :rolleyes:

I had to do the install over a modem (56K) and it took 7 HOURS! However, it lets you download in chunks, so you can go in for as many download sessions as you like. It worked fine for me, did about 4 different download sessions.

(If anyone in the "tech-guru" department knows any issues with this method, other than "get a DSL, ya dern fool", post away!) :)

Just a quick note for those of you who haven't done SP-2 and are still on a modem: :rolleyes:

I had to do the install over a modem (56K) and it took 7 HOURS! However, it lets you download in chunks, so you can go in for as many download sessions as you like. It worked fine for me, did about 4 different download sessions.

(If anyone in the "tech-guru" department knows any issues with this method, other than "get a DSL, ya dern fool", post away!) :)

This was in the very first post of this thread :) :
"Request a CD from Microsoft at:
www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/winxpsp2.mspx Or
http://www.michna.com/kb/WxSP2.htm#ordering_the_service_pack_on_a_cd
Of course, this means waiting for delivery by snail-mail, but installation will be much quicker and you’ll have it if you ever need to reinstall Windows XP. Also, if you have dial-up, you won’t keep your line tied up for hours or have to worry about being disconnected (not that that ever happens, right?).
"

It's free and only takes a week or two to get it. Then it's MUCH faster to install :).

The other sensible solution for dial-up users is to get a friend with briadband to download the entire developers installation pack for SP2 and save it to CD.

Downloading it via dial-up is a last resort option, in my view.

or just ask microsoft for a disc with it on. take a couple of weeks but it'll save having to download it again if you get problems with the machine

Several posts in this forum seem to have a common theme: problems with spyware after installing Service Pack 2 (SP2). Though Microsoft's new security update package is mainly about protecting systems from worms, viruses and spyware, it can't do much about what's already on these computers – and that's what's causing problems.

Microsoft is warning users of Windows XP to check for spyware before downloading SP2.

Barry Goff, a group product manager at Microsoft, said some spyware could cause computers to freeze up upon installation of the update.

Programs such as AdAware and Spybot can help remove spyware, and it would also be a good idea to run hijackthis and post a log in the security forum for review before downloading SP2 (sorry about creating more work for the HJT techs :) ).

Microsoft recommends that users clean their PCs of spyware and back up their data before turning on the auto update feature that automatically downloads SP2, or downloading it manually.

I used Stinger after trying Defender Pro and I also realized some problems incur because more then one program may be on at the same time, for the same task. Windows' newly added Firewall. My Norton subscription is just ending and I am still thinking of using XP's own Firewall...along with AOL 9.0 SE. Am I OK in doing so for general surfing and to get info on a rumor I heard, sites as databases for song lyrics are ripe for trojans, How can I get around this if true?
Thanks for the great advise
BILL S.

Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows XP is a recommended upgrade that fixes many issues (mainly security related).

Question: do you need to install sp1 before sp2, or is there everthing in it sp1 has?

If you have the SP2 upgrade CD from Microsoft (that you can order for free off their site if you dig deep enough), or are installing from scratch with a full (not just upgrade) XP SP2 installation CD, you can use that to get a system to SP2 without having to have SP1 installed first. However, if you go to Windows Update with a generic XP, it will make you install SP1 first just because and only because Microsoft is requiring at least SP1 just to use the update site (to get anything after that level, anyway), but isn't making SP2 mandatory to use the Windows Update site. So to re-cap, SP1 will come up before it will let you upgrade to anything else on that site, but only for that reason. Bottom line is that SP2 is the culmination of everything, and has patches that have superceded SP1 and would replace them if they were there originally, or will just add them if not already present. Once the system is at SP2, it is at SP2 - it doesn't matter how it got there.

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