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Problems mount with Windows XP Service Pack 2
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Since first alerting you to the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 in the August 17 edition of Tech Tuesday, a number of glitches with the upgrade have surfaced. This isn’t surprising. As VanRamblings has noted previously, people are going to have some problems with SP2, one of Microsoft’s most intrusive and potentially disruptive updates ever.
In today’s Tech Tuesday, we’ll examine some of these concerns.
An Information Week story written by Techweb’s Gregg Keizer, quotes an interesting statistic: According to asset-monitoring firm AssetMetrix, about 10 percent of the PCs upgraded from Windows XP to SP2 in their test universe experienced some problems. That figure comes from a study of over 44,000 upgrades at over 340 companies.
Statistically, 10% might not sound like a particularly high number. But that will be of little comfort if you’re among those who will experience these difficulties. For complete details, read this press release about its test.
Microsoft acknowledged on August 31 that the browser’s pop-up blocker in SP2 can cause the Windows Update site to halt with an HTTP error 500. (Other pop-up blockers can cause this, too.) The solution is to add the Windows Update site to the browser’s list of sites that are allowed to use pop-up windows, explained in Knowledge Base article 883820.
Last week, Microsoft revealed that between 15 and 17 million people have updated to SP2. This is far short of the more than 300 million Windows XP users in the world and the 100 million people Microsoft hopes will upgrade by the end of October. eWeek reports that many IT managers are delaying the installation of SP2 for months because it may break applications.
Meanwhile, a survey of 32 IT managers published in Computerworld reveals that none have installed SP2, except for two who were part of Microsoft’s early-adopter programme. The reason for the delay is the requirement for application-compatibility testing. If you’re interested in testing your own applications against SP2 you should check out the Application Compatibility Testing and Mitigation Guide for Windows XP Service Pack 2.
As of this writing, there are still dozens of common software programmes which are incompatible with Windows XP SP2, from Norton AntiVirus 2003 to WordPerfect Office 11 and ZoneAlarm 5.0.590
If you haven’t installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 yet, you may want to delay installation until the vast majority of compatibility problems have been ironed out. As VanRamblings has written previously, Microsoft has made available a downloadable tool that will temporarily block delivery of Windows XP SP2 to a PC through its automatic Windows Update feature. Simply download the SP2 blocker, extract the file to a temporary folder, and click on the supplied XPSP2Blocker.exe file. Good luck, and safe computing.
