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Summary: The chances of SP2 crashing your machine is low, but here are a few precautions to take before installing that will help you avoid a potential crash.
Will SP2 Crash my machine?
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There's been a lot of press about Windows XP SP2 crashing or hanging machines
or applications. The good news is that like most "news", you only hear the bad stuff.
In fact, the news reflects only a minority of installations - the vast majority of SP2 installations are
working great. The bad news is that if you're in that minority,
it doesn't matter to you that it works fine everywhere else.
So what can you do to make sure that you stand the highest chance of success?
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Here are a few steps to take prior to installing SP2:
Scan for viruses and spyware: several spyware applications are known
to cause problems with SP2. Make sure your spyware and virus definitions
are up to date and scan your machine to clean out these pests. Get the latest pre-SP2 updates: your chances for success installing SP2 are already
high, but to make them even higher, make sure you're as up to date as possible on
everything else. That means visiting Windows Update and
taking everything except SP2 itself. You might also make sure you have the
latest hardware drivers for your system, including video, network and any other
components - especially if they are not mainstream brands. This might involve a little leg
work to visit those manufacturer's web sites. Alternately you can wait and update those
drivers if you have a failure installing SP2 that might be caused by out-of-date drivers. Back up your computer: I honestly don't care how you do this, but do it. In fact,
even if you don't install SP2, do it. I get questions every day that could
be quickly and easily solved had folks simply had a recent backup of their system.
If you lost everything on your computer, could you recover? If not, start
backing up. Now. Do it.
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Make sure you have room: The process of installing SP2 can take up to 1.8 gigabytes on
your hard disk. That's not how much room it will take up once installed. SP2
doesn't take up nearly that much room once you're done installing. However the process
of installing, including making backup files, setting a restore point, copying temporary files
around, and so on may require that much room on your primary hard drive.
Check the release notes, and known problems list: Microsoft had made a
ton of information available for Windows XP Service Pack 2, and I've included
links to important documents and portals below. Two of the most interesting to
review prior to installation are Release notes for Windows XP Service Pack 2,
and Some programs seem to stop working after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2.
The later, in particular, includes a list of applications that are known to have
issues with Service Pack 2. In many cases, updates or workaround are already available from the
various manufacturers.
Read Microsoft's "Before you Install" Article:
What to Know Before You Download and Install Windows XP Service Pack 2
is an overview article that Microsoft has provided that covers several of the topics
I've covered and several more. In particular it includes links to step-by-step
instructions for actually installing SP2.
And finally:
- Don't Panic if an application stops working: XP SP2 includes changes that
attempt to make your computer more secure and safe from viruses, spyware, and other
malicious applications. In doing so they've changed the way a couple of things work, or changed the
default settings for certain aspects of the operating system. Applications that
rely on lax settings, or worse, actually rely on bugs that allowed them to misbehave
in the past are going to have problems. Use the Microsoft Support web site,
use the support web sites for the manufacturer of the software that seems to be having issues,
and use the internet to search for the fixes and workarounds that are most likely already out there.
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At this writing, Windows XP Service Pack 2 has been out in the field long enough
that I feel confident enough to endorse installing it.
The vast majority of SP2 installations
have gone smoothly and without incidents.
A lot of the noise about problems is due to a small percentage of applications that were behaving
improperly to begin with, or security related changes that simply require user
intervention before being allowed to continue.
I run SP2 on my computers running Windows XP, and have had no issues.
Related:
Article 446 | Posted September 13, 2004
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I am surprised that not one reply has mentioned using the system restore utility in XP. Simply use a restore point before the sp2 installation. I am 99.9% sure that it will undo the damage that sp2 has done.
Posted by: Joe at December 27, 2006 12:19 PMI installed it on my P2-266mhz system with 64MB RAM. I didn't damage my system but it really slowed it down. I'm back to SP1.
Posted by: Terry Hollett at January 27, 2007 8:03 AMwhere can I get rescue disc for advent 7027 laptop.My laptop wouldn't boot up in any mode.In the end I put in advent3000 series desktop rescue disk.Lap top works fine but lost most of my drivers..ie wireless,sound and dvd ..stupid of me I know
Posted by: max hummer at February 16, 2007 12:38 PMRegards Max
Hi
Posted by: merle nelson at March 13, 2007 8:35 AMI have no problems with sp2 but you said you talked to pcbeginner???HOW. I bot their program 2 months ago and have tried to get some help. Hell I can.t even make contact. No one answers the phone nor numerous emails. Loos like a big scame from here
m nelson
I downloaded Windows XP 2 after receiving a prompt. The download took 10 minutes or so and then prompted me to restart my computer, now all I have staring at me is my beautiful tropical island wallpaper, no icons and no start menu, and pressing ctrl-alt-delete does nothing...PLEASE HELP!
Posted by: Raif at March 26, 2007 12:00 PMBoth the computer in my basement and my room have windows XP SP2 and no problems, and the computer in my room has Internet Explorer 7.
My dad had to reinstall Mirosoft Windows XP on my PC because it has errors like not playing system sounds, internet connection (wireless @ home) problems, C Drive not formatting sice it had 3.8GB of Hard Drive Space left: all of the cache, programs, etc. Now I can do everything except downoads from internet sites (McAffee 2007 installed and PC protected). WinRAR not installed at the moment.
Posted by: Benjamin wilson at March 28, 2007 6:15 PMThe answer is YES. It will crash your computer. I installed it after receiving a prompt, it finished downloading, and then it asked me to restart the computer. After the restart, my PC couldn't recognize the local profile anymore, it lost my Word documents, all my music files, and all my pictures, etc. I ran a system recovery in order to take the comp. back to its original state, but it was already too late to save my files. Luckily, I had backed most of them up. And yes... I DID run an anti-spyware scan before installing. Nothing warned me against going ahead with it. The long and short of it: don't install. You'll lose everything. I nearly cried.
Posted by: LB at February 1, 2008 10:48 PMCrap on you, Microsoft.
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Hash: SHA1
I'm sorry that you had a bad experience, but "The Answer" is
most certainly not yes for everyone. Hundreds of thousands
if not millions of people have installed SP2 without a
problem.
Leo
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Posted by: Leo A. Notenboom at February 4, 2008 8:12 PMKXaQcZupEazD9kV1jYQmHKU=
=KtHG
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Coulda, woulda, shoulda.....Was downloading photos from a card reader to Canon's photo download/viewing application to an external hard drive. Got XP error: "Server busy, click Switch to or Retry (buttons)" Buttons did not work, had to use Task manager to shut down. Then re-opened application - folder was still there but all files of photos currently being downloaded as well as previously downloaded photos were gone! Folder properties were 0 files, 0 bytes! How do I recover these files? Is it just the folder or all files that have been corrupted? They are not in the recycle bin and could not be found using searches. Thank you!
Posted by: BC at June 13, 2008 9:12 PMO.K. I have a Dell Dimension and had to do a clean re-install of my windows XP using the SP2 disk. I understand that if I have the SP2 disk, then I shouldn't need the SP1 disk (at least according an article I read on your site). It started as a system32 error, which I couldn't bypass. I had just run updated virus scans and performed a system update, so I don't think I had a bug. I ended up having to reinstall. Now, after I've done the reinstall, I can get NO applications...it doesn't recognize my printer, modem, nothing...and its stuck on a crappy resolution (680/16-bit) so it looks like I'm half-blind if you don't know any better. I've tried the troubleshooting solutions unsuccessfully, then informed that I need to be online, which I can't because its not recognizing any networks...I've even tried to download my server disk...doesn't recognize. So, is it fried? Could this be something that can be fixed by someone with better knowledge than me (which isn't difficult). I've got all the files off of the computer that I need, so there's nothing left to salvage in the hard drive.
Posted by: Thomas Kane at October 12, 2008 10:42 PM