Attn Windows users: Windows XP Service Release 2 is headed your way via Automatic Updates & the Windows Update site. XP Home users should start to see it phased in today while XP Pro users should see it starting Wednesday.
Two tips: Make some backups of your My Documents and important stuff (photos, music, whatever you wouldn’t care to lose). I know you do that already, but humor me. Put them on CD/DVD/Network/whatever – just not on your PC. Secondly, create a restore point now. That way if it all goes south during the upgrade you can restore your system back to it’s config today.
It looks like one should be prepared to find all of the TCP/IP ports your favorite programs use to communicate, so you can “unfirewall” them after you apply SP2.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=842242
I believe that anyone with broadband should invest in a router with hardware firewall and skip any software firewalls. With has hackable and problem prone as Windows software is, I just don’t trust it.
Kevin: What does this mean to me, one who still runs Window 98 on the old pc and XP on the new pc?
(The new computer has nothing saved but the crap it came with. Am I okay? Not okay? help.)
I’m pretty sure I got my SP2 last week. Now Windows was firewalling things, and IE is blocking popups. A real annoying thing, though, was it changed the order of my “links” toolbar. And I think it keeps changing it even after I put it back the way I like it.
The re-ordering links thing is the first I’ve heard that, but I haven’t done much investigation so far.
If you’re experiencing any connectivity problems (ftp or xbox tunnel apps, for example), here’s a Microsoft guide to fixing problems caused by Service Pack 2 (SP2) Upgrade.
I discovered another problem! I had to change my FTP clients to Passive mode. That might be in that link you posted… I haven’t checked. I should probably check, huh? haha