Windows XP SP2 Almost Final

[aldente]

Well, I installed the German SP2 RTM this morning, and after disabling firewall, virus-scanner, popup-blocker in ie, tcp-limitation, attachment-blocking in oe and all the other crap, it works quite fine.

[JMI]

Maybe your machine simply forgot Wie man Deutsches spricht.

Got to love M$. They know how to make your machine their machine.

Regards,

[aldente]

The problem is not that those "great features" do not work - I just don't want them!
When using Brain v1.0 nobody needs all that crap.

And another big problem i forgot to mention: Microsoft changed the bootlogo!
Now it is without the name of the version ("Professional", etc.).
Chaning it back takes some time!

And one (little) problem: You can't disable backing up of old files using the SP2-Installation-Dialog, so you have to start it 3 times:
1. See that it does not work.
2. Start it to find out the parameter.
3. Start it with the correct parameter.
And everytime the whole nasty package is being extracted first.

[ArC]

Originally Posted by Big_or_what

And everytime the whole nasty package is being extracted first.

I know that problem, too but it's easy to solve.
The servicepack package extracts all of its contents to the temporary folder of your account. The folder itself usually has a cryptic name but it's easy to find. Once you have found the folder just remove writing permissions for this folder for EVERYONE by customizing the NTFS ACL. Now when you quit the SP installer the contents of the SP packge are not deleted

[aldente]

Well, I could have done so, I also could have extracted it with WinRAR - but anyway, I would at least have extracted it twice - and thats two often!

Does Microsoft even disable disabling of backing up files, just to avoid that the newbie-bastards do so?

/Edit: Have a look at the attached Screenshot (made from 2 singe screenshots): Even if its just a graphical error ---> its nasty!

[Mkz]

Regarding pirate keys, here's some info

http://www.msfn.org/comments.php?shownews=9214

Many users have questioned why illegal PIDs are being allowed on a Windows XP SP2 installation when they were blocked in previous betas. This is due to Microsoft's new approach on security in Service Pack 2 to prevent any further Windows XP machines from getting infected with viruses and malicious attacks. Microsoft's Gary Schare answers:

"There have been a number of discussions on this newsgroup regarding whether SP2 will install on non-genuine (aka "pirated") versions of Windows. Here is the official Microsoft position on this topic:

We expect that nearly all Windows XP users, running genuine or pirated Windows, will have access to the security technologies in SP2. The same users that were blocked from installing SP1 - those that have used a small set of legacy pirated product keys - will be blocked from installing SP2. We believe that there are very few systems in use today that use these keys -- in other words, the pirates have moved on to other keys which we are not blocking.

So how do we charaterize our policy?

We want to make sure that the broadest number of people can install SP2. The nature of malicious attacks on computer users is constantly changing and we will continue to evaluate how we deal with security updates for pirated versions of Windows to best protect our genuine Windows customers.

[JMI]

That's why some of us are waiting for all you gungho hotshots to figure out all the problems before we push "install." We can ALWAYS count on M$ to break or f*ck up something, somehow, and often "on purpose."

I remember several years ago when they were releasing a "free" version of Encarta everywhere, that worked perfectly with M$ product, but, "oh did we do that", just "happened" to break everyone's current version of Wordperfect, which just "happened" then to be more popular that "Word." Took them a long time to conceed that "anything" they might have done could possible have affected another competitor's software and "certainly" we wouldn't have done that to one of our big competitors "on purpose." Right.

Regards,