Windows SP2, II
I had an update to my post on Microsoft Windows XP SP2 yesterday so take a look if you didn't see it. As a follow-up to that I've now installed the update on three PCs. The first, as noted earlier was my Dell OptiPlex 260 at work. I followed that with my Dell Inspiron 1150 laptop, and then my main PC at home (which is a whitebox PC). All installed successfully except for the last one.
My main PC at home has an Intel 815-based motherboard, Intel Pentium III 933MHz CPU, Plextor CD burner, Maxtor hard drive, and 512MB of Kingston RAM. When I tried to install SP2, the install stopped at the point of installing MovieMaker 2 (don't ask me why it installs that since I don't use nor want it but you have little or no control over what gets installed). I let it sit there for two hours just in case it would start up again but no joy. So I ended up doing a hardware reset.
The PC rebooted Windows and came up with an error message saying the system was in an unstable state (no sh*t, Keemo Sahbee) and to remove SP2. So I went into Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, and started the process to remove SP2. Note that you may get a couple of dire warnings saying removing SP2 will cause everything, including the NTKernel to stop working. Ignore the warnings and continue on. Once SP2 was removed and the system rebooted I tried installing SP2 again. This time it worked. I don't why it got hung up the first time but all seems well now.
Having now seen what gets installed I'm sorry to say I'm underwhelmed. I downloaded over 270MBs for what? I don't use Internet Explorer so it doesn't matter to me if it's allegedly a little safer to use. I don't use MovieMaker. I already have a firewall (ZoneAlarm at work and Sygate at home on the laptop). I don't use Outlook or Outlook Express so I don't care if it's less of a security hole than before. I dunno. Maybe recompiling everything with most buffer overruns cleared out is worth it. Assuming here that they got all of them (which time will tell).
Anyway, if you support PCs for a living, I assume you have already downloaded this and are evaluating the impact it will have on operations. If you are JoeAverage with a dialup connection, I would wait until Windows Update has the smaller 90MB update available (rumored to be around August 25th).