By Jo Best, 2 September 2004 14:05
NEWS The saga that is XP SP2 rumbles on with an announcement that, as Microsoft is finally getting a handle on the rollout of the service pack, new research reckons that one in 10 PCs will appear to fall over post-installation.
Network auditor AssetMetrix Research Labs conducted research with 340 companies with more than 44,000 desktops and found just over one in 10 of them had compatibility issues after they'd installed XP SP2.
Bad news for small fry though - according to the research, the smaller the company, the more likely it is to encounter SP2 problems. Companies with less than 100 XP-equipped PCs had over 12 per cent affected, while bigger firms with over 100 computers only had six per cent.
Greg Lambert, technical director of application management firm Camwood, found that for large corporates, around one in 10 apps failed, with the most complex applications faring worst.
Lambert expects that XP SP2 will finally be rolled out by big business in three to six months, to give "risk-averse" companies, such as banks, which can't afford to have any slip up with business critical applications, time to thoroughly test the service pack before they install it.
Financial institutions running on XP are in a dilemma - as a sector, finance is among the keenest to secure its systems and roll out SP2. However, it's also one of the least tolerant of downtime.
One financial institution was offline for two and a half hours after incompatibility with patch took down its trading floor and suffered fines as a result, said Lambert. "People's jobs are on the line." He added that the rollout should prove useful for most companies as it will make the patching process less painful.
Comments
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1. anonymous
Why don’t companies use a more professional and stable platform than Microsoft’s operating systems? There is Linux and Unix for example. I know that Unix is old but how many people actually know what the operating system is actually doing? Once the companies IT department have got the serves and computers set up, they have a system much more likely to give them less trouble than any of Microsoft’s platforms. In just writing this using Microsoft’s packages I had to start up again because the computer froze and it has only been less an hour since it was booted up.
2. anonymous
So we have already found out. It goes to show when a company has an almost monopoly on any item then they couldn't care less about their customers.
3. anonymous
SP2 has stopped Restore working on one PC and on the laptop has made cookie folders read only. So programs that want to write as ession cookie cannot do so and do not run
4. Phil Tarbrook
I had no problems installing SP2,however I ordered the Disc,and intalled whilst online...
5. Bob Moore
No problems so far with installing SP2 on PC running XP Professional and Laptop running XP Home with cable and wireless networking to a Broadband Router. Both machines were up-to-date with previous service packs and critical and security updates and maybe this makes a difference.
6. lee
installed sp2 on xp home. upto date with all updates etc... try to run any program that uses cd and the p.c crashes every time. program after program blamed by online crash analisis.. updating driver after driver but will i finish before xmas!!!!
7. Johnny Tokyo
Yeah well whatever you say. If you go installing SP2 without even looking at what implications it will have on your existing applications that you use you're an idiot through and through.
I think that Mr. Anonymous who reckons companies should install Linux/Unix instead of SP2 is off his rocker. I use Linux at home and (when possible) at work but the two are in-comparable in terms of end-user experience.
IT people: test SP2, if it doesn't work with your mission-critical apps, find out why and try to find a solution - bugger off with these rubbish articles saying 'SP2 breaks God-knows how many applications' - if an application is badly secured then it's the application's fault not the people who are trying to make the OS more secure. Microsoft should be applauded for listening to criticism and releasing a security-orientated OS update.
Silicon.com your articles about SP2 have been the least informed and biased articles I've read in years.
8. anonymous
As a very small business, don't do it... I am facing a weekend restoring our PCs multimedia capabilities. Searching various online help sites, we appear to be among the lucky ones - at least we could still use our main apps.
9. Tony C
I installed XP SP2 on an AMD System ABIT KD7 Mainboard 512MB PC2100 64MB Nvidea MX400 Video Card. All went sweet THEN The PC randomly locked up and you could only restart the PC. The event viewer showed nothing. I uninstalled SP2 and all went back to being sweet again. Thanks Bill, I used to beta-test for you, I'd forgotten I was still doing it now!
10. anonymous
What amuses me in the previous comments is that the two PCs not encountering PBs were either online or up to date... Well of course if a PC's already patched, patching it again can't do much harm.
It is not the first time that MS does that to us. Can anybody remember a Windows NT4 SP4 ? How about the problems with the MS java VM ?
As far as replacing Windows by Linux, I must say that I really would go for it. But let us not forget that despite its ideal OS image and good alternative, one look to the vulnerabilities records will indicate that Linux is just as vulnerable. There is no magic in computing. The advantage of Linux is that you know what makes it tick, period. But at the same time, migrating from WinX to Linux, creates a much larger load on local IT people to answer calls. It also frightens users. I have seen it. As the saying goes : been there, done that, got the tee-shirt. and it cost too much. And not just financially. The decision will be to remain with MS or retrain or replace ou IT staff when migrating OS.
11. anonymous
What amuses me in the previous comments is that the two PCs not encountering PBs were either online or up to date... Well of course if a PC's already patched, patching it again can't do much harm.
It is not the first time that MS does that to us. Can anybody remember a Windows NT4 SP4 ? How about the problems with the MS java VM ?
As far as replacing Windows by Linux, I must say that I really would go for it. But let us not forget that despite its ideal OS image and good alternative, one look to the vulnerabilities records will indicate that Linux is just as vulnerable. There is no magic in computing. The advantage of Linux is that you know what makes it tick, period. But at the same time, migrating from WinX to Linux, creates a much larger load on local IT people to answer calls. It also frightens users. I have seen it. As the saying goes : been there, done that, got the tee-shirt. and it cost too much. And not just financially. The decision will be to remain with MS or retrain or replace ou IT staff when migrating OS.
12. Jamie Richards
I installed XP SP2 on a Windows XP Pro machine just to see what would fail before rolling out the upgrade to our customers. After running the patch the XP machine has a screen resolution of 640x480 with 4bit colour (it was 1024x768 - 32bit colour). This setting cannot be changed. I wonder what else no longer works?
13. Stuart Stirling
I installed XP2 with great exitement to see what inprovements it would give.
This was a big mistake! I have never been happy with XP at the best of times and have now gone back to Windows 2000 Prof. It may be old and clanky but its rock steady and very reliable.
14. Richard
Listen carefully, I will say this only once.
All this SP2 pain and heartache derives from a slavish devotion to the church of Redmond.
Ignore any whiff of schadenfreude from this humble non-IBM clone user and ponder this fact:
The very souls that preach competition in the marketplace perversely believe a virtual monopoly in desktop OS's is a good thing. What will it take to wake people up?
There are excellent -even vastly superior - alternatives to XP out there. Linux and Mac OS X spring to mind. Interoperability is not a problem, your courage is.
In the long run you will save money, heartache, grief, downtime etc etc and probably have a far better user experience.
Or you could just let your businesses sleepwalk from one Microsoft blunder to the next.
15. Edward Beresford
I have now installed XP SP2 on three seperate stand alone machines - two destop and 1 laptop. The installations went without a hitch and XP SP2 has proved itself time and again. Why all the whining if it doesnt go strictly to plan? Its (XP SP2) what we have demanded for so long and now we have it.