Is sp2 for xp really that important?

I just finished installing sp2 and it ate up ALOT of my memory. Is it really that important? I know its extra protection, but I'm not online all that much and with my firewall and anti virus protection programs I already have, I would think I don't really need the WAY BIG update. I'm running on less than 1 gb now which I know will slow up alot of my games and programs.

I researched a little and came across this article about the protection flaws in sp2...http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1724800,00.asp

Whatcha think??

 

A few issues there, but firstly, if your PC is speedy enough for Windows XP, then SP2 IS a good idea IMHO. SP2 does a few things, like beef up the firewall, add pop-up blocking to IE6, prompt you more to keep Windows Update a regular part of your maintenance cycle and watches your AV software to help you keep it up to date as well, but there are other things it does that it is advisable to go with.

What processor are you running now, how much RAM, and what sized HDD do you have? "slowness" is a function of CPU speed, RAM, HDD speed, and graphics card. If you are running out of HDD space, do a big cleanup, defrag, and then think about a second HDD for extra storage. If you have a 5400rpm drive, upgrading to a 7200rpm IDE drive with 8Mb cache can make a difference.

I've noticed that XP can be "boosted" by turning off all the optional graphical menu effects - and switching everything to "Classic" style/view. Go to Settings, Control Panel, (switch to classic view here, and for the task bar), System, then click the Advanced Tab, click Performance, and then click "Adjust for Best Performance" (all the Window Dressing animation and shadow GUI effects are then turned off!). It makes a difference, and while it makes XP "look" more like Windows 2000 (which I would still recommend for Pentium II and low-mid range Pentium IIIs), I can tell you it can help a Pentium III 733 to 933MHz (or low end P4) PC zip along a lot quicker with XP!

I was told than in many ways XP is designed to run better on slower PCs than Windows 2000 is, but I'm not sure in practice how this can be. Anyway, SP2 will not "slow" your PC much more than XP with SP1, I'd suggest if you can add more RAM, a bigger/faster HDD, or beefier graphics card, and tweak XP for "performance" rather than "surface effects", you'll go fine.

cheers,
-Daniel

 

A better bet is w2k/sp4 - a much better mouse trap than the xp virus...

 

....and check the date on that article! SP2 was beta early mid 2004, fairly "new" Nov 2004, and there have been plently of updates since then. Any XP install I do now, SP2 is "streamed" into my install disk "standard" issue.

 

I like Windows 2000 too, I'd say a definite for any PC less than a PIII 733MHz, it does fine, and remember to install SP4 & the post-SP4 30mb "rollup" (mini SP5) before going online for any length of time! I know that the 8Gb/3Gb HDD combination would be better suited to a clean-lean W2K install, but you haven't mentioned your processor speed and RAM amount. Are you prepared to do a full format/reinstall of your main hdd (backup to your 3Gb HDD first) to "upgrade" to W2K? These days it seems a suite of Anti-virus, Firewall & Antispyware tools are pretty much essential too, fortunately there are good free versions of all these.

 

SP2 is important to ME because it has patches for crap like the Blaster worm and a couple others.

 

Yes, Blaster (Sept 2003) and Sasser (May 2004) were very serious worms that could hit unpatched PCs (without firewalls) that were online, no opening an email attachment required. However, while a service packs like SP2 has a rollup of all past "patches" and many other updates, the whole 270Mb SP2 is not necessary just to get those patches. They are available as stand alone downloads (200kb to 5Mb) from the MS website. If you were running XP SP1, you can still use Windows/MS update to auto-update your PC while online, or just install patches individually/manually after downloading them yourself.

The SP2/XP issues you raise are more to do with performance slowdown and HDD space I guess - I'm not sure what your CPU/processor speed is, but more RAM, a bigger fast HDD, and tweaking XP for performance might make a difference.

Personally, a project involving setting up a PC for my daughter (have it going now just before Christmas!) showed me how some things affect performance with XP. The PC is a PIII 933MHz, and I had a 120Gb 7200rpm HDD (partitioned to 40/80Gb), 512Mb RAM and a Radeon 128Mb graphics card for it, so decided to run with XPSP2 as an OS. It is going great, and if the XP "performance" tweak is applied for a user (and classic mode wherever applicable), it flies along appreciably quicker, like a P4!

I had set up a similar PIII 933MHz for my younger (9 yo) son, 320Mb RAM, 2 HDDs (5400rpm, 10Gb and 3Gb), also a 128Mb graphics card, and installed W2K. It is MUCH slower, I think mainly because of the slower HDD - it has the same mobo, processor, graphics - just less RAM and a smaller/slower HDD.

Now my 15 yo son, having seen this activity, wants a super-charged P4 to replace his PIII - we have the case, mobo and a P4 2.8GHz CPU ordered so far, it will be a January summer holiday project!!!

cheers,
-Daniel

 

I appreciate all the advice. I hate the extra space on my hard drive that it took up, but until I go bigger I'll just hafta suck it up.

 

hey rexy, I have a PIII similar to yours and I find a fresh install of XP loads up alot faster than a fresh install of W2K, and the XP is running on half the RAM the W2K had. Not to mention that my W2K PC had to load up other stuff like graphic filters, etc just to do some of the stuff that a newly installed XP can do.
I have it set on classic mode only cos I can access control panel, etc alot easier than with the more modern mode, figured I was old fashion. But yeah, I generally set things up for performance than for aesthetics.
I am on SP1 to be honest but when I installed that I OPTED OUT OF the restore option. If you opt to be able to back out of a SP then the instalation will write ALOT of stuff to your windows folder and if one has a small HDD than one may wanna rethink that. I may not be able to restore to what I had before the SP but I'm able to live with that, my prerogative.

Bee Rain, I wonder if you can reclaim the space by backing out of SP2 and then reinstalling but not opting to be able to back out of SP2??? Dunno if this will help your memory situation tho.

 

Yes, the opt out for those SPs saves a huge amount of disk space [but makes it a one-way trip, as you say!], and I'd suggest you turn off "system restore" as well.

If you go to the add/restore programs control panel, tick the "show updates" box and you should be able to see where you can uninstall SP2.

btw, the P4 build is going ok 2.66GHz CPU, 512Mb DDR 400MHz RAM, starting with a basic 80Gb 7200rpm HDD and CDRW, but adding a 10000rpm SCSI drive and SATA later, and DVDRW! And I want to experiment with UBUntu and Fedora Core before the summer holidays are over!!

Happy New Year!

 

MEPIS? anyone have experience with that Linux distribution?

 

hi....

I used mepis for about three weeks it is easy to install and runs smoothly and you can upgrade/add new applications through debian sources/repositories but now I am back to ubuntu and debian etch

 

Yes, I'm about to try ubuntu and Fedora, but I might try mepis as well!