Member Avatar for jknouse

My first question is...... how important is SP2 ?? Is the security a big issue if you're running McAfee Suite with Virus Scan, Firewall Plus and their Privacy Service. My web access is Comcast highspeed cable.
I have tried to upgrade to SP2 4 times now. First 3 times were about a year ago maybe longer. Each time I experienced huge problems that manifested themself over a period of a couple days to maybe a week, eventually leading to the blue screen of death. I would wipe clean and re-install following Dell's proceedures for XP reinstalls (complicated instructions for a dullard like me.... huge headache!). I thought maybe my problems were spyware related so I would run Spybot each time as well as the MS beta app. 'Antispyware'. After the third reinstall and SP2 attempt I just reloaded and stuck with SP1 for over a year with little problems except for the annoying problem of MS constant reminder that I desperatley needed to upgrade to SP2 for security reasons. I would try and manually sort through the security updates and load each one without loading SP2, some worked, some didn't. Long story short, after ugrading from dialup to cable a few weeks ago and installingthe McAfee Suite, I decided to try SP2 again.... Same problems! If I weren't such a tight wade I'd throw this dell in the crapper and buy something new.

I now have a huge paper weight on my desk that won't let me even connect to the web, either through my cable modem or through my old dial up sevice that I kept for just such occassions. This leads me to the second question...... If SP2 is suppose to be necessary how the heck do I load it on this dell without these huge crash problems?

  • 4 Contributors
  • 5 Replies
  • 155 Views
  • 1 Year Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by fredlind
Member Avatar for caperjack

go to www.microsoft.com/downloads ,down the full sp2 burn it to disk and save it ,
then do a fresh install of you windows and load the SP2 first thing after the fresh install.not a fresh install will wipe out everything on you computer so make backups of important info on you computer.

Member Avatar for jknouse

Thanks for the info and I'll try this next. Quick question though.... I followed your link to MS downloads and I can't seem to locate any MS location or link that will let me just download a copy of SP2 to burn to a disk. I have to use my computer at work to do this because my home pc won't access the internet now that I have it screwed up. The only way that I can find to download SP2 is to use MS auto update tool and that seems to just want to update or upgrade the pc directly and not give me the option to download a copy to a folder or my desktop.

Member Avatar for caperjack

Thanks for the info and I'll try this next. Quick question though.... I followed your link to MS downloads and I can't seem to locate any MS location or link that will let me just download a copy of SP2 to burn to a disk. I have to use my computer at work to do this because my home pc won't access the internet now that I have it screwed up. The only way that I can find to download SP2 is to use MS auto update tool and that seems to just want to update or upgrade the pc directly and not give me the option to download a copy to a folder or my desktop.

In the link i gave just click on, see more popular downloads ,then #9 sp2 for IT pros and developers .

Member Avatar for fredlind

Good Lord, so many times I tried to install the SP2 on my Dell Dimension 4500.
My problem was always the Bluescreen Horror after rebooting and I spent all these hours restoring to SP1!!!
Problem for me was that I had partitioned the C-drive (having multiple XP-installations) and after reboot the booting did not find the system. I really tried all options, using Norton System Works Premier boot-CD and XP recovery console. But everything failed. And, cursing Dell for not supporting the problem (other then a link to Microsoft on how to restore to SP1), I thougt I had to buy myself a new computer.
Until I the other day found the soloution using the XP Recovery Consol.
The crucial issue was that I had to change the booting path using bootcfg command. This command scans the drive for XP istallations and lets you add and bootable installations.
I had to do this on both partitions seperately and after doing that I can now easyly switch between my two XP installations.
TIP : A very useful thing to do before you do the SP2 install, is to install the Recovery Console on you C-drive On restarting / rebooting you then get the option to boot into the recovery console on the hard disk and it will load very much faster from there than from a cd-drive.
The bootcfg command "add" solved my problem. After some trial and error I messed up the boot-ini file and had to cleans it using the boot.ini edit function described in the bottom part oft the page here : http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/bootini.htm
Well, I just wish that Dell would have figured this out for me .... It would have saved me so many hours failing to install the Windows XP SP2.

/fred

My first question is...... how important is SP2 ?? Is the security a big issue if you're running McAfee Suite with Virus Scan, Firewall Plus and their Privacy Service. My web access is Comcast highspeed cable.
I have tried to upgrade to SP2 4 times now. First 3 times were about a year ago maybe longer. Each time I experienced huge problems that manifested themself over a period of a couple days to maybe a week, eventually leading to the blue screen of death. I would wipe clean and re-install following Dell's proceedures for XP reinstalls (complicated instructions for a dullard like me.... huge headache!). I thought maybe my problems were spyware related so I would run Spybot each time as well as the MS beta app. 'Antispyware'. After the third reinstall and SP2 attempt I just reloaded and stuck with SP1 for over a year with little problems except for the annoying problem of MS constant reminder that I desperatley needed to upgrade to SP2 for security reasons. I would try and manually sort through the security updates and load each one without loading SP2, some worked, some didn't. Long story short, after ugrading from dialup to cable a few weeks ago and installingthe McAfee Suite, I decided to try SP2 again.... Same problems! If I weren't such a tight wade I'd throw this dell in the crapper and buy something new.

I now have a huge paper weight on my desk that won't let me even connect to the web, either through my cable modem or through my old dial up sevice that I kept for just such occassions. This leads me to the second question...... If SP2 is suppose to be necessary how the heck do I load it on this dell without these huge crash problems?

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.