Installing Windows XP Service Pack 2

Boomer’s Experience

• At Boomer Consulting, we got early copies of the final version of SP2, and we installed them on all our XP machines.  Some of the machines already had the Internet Connection Firewall enabled, some were using third-party firewalls, and some didn’t have any firewall enabled. 
• The installations went smoothly.  Remarkably, several of the computers seemed to operate significantly faster after installing SP2, as if Windows had been freshly installed.  It is unknown what caused this phenomenon.
• Enabling the Internet Connection Firewall didn’t break any of the applications we currently use on a regular basis.  One application, Time Matters World Server (the Java version of Time Matters), was adversely affected, but LexisNexis assures us a fix is imminent.

For End Users

• Don’t let Windows automatically install Service Pack 2 without first communicating with your network administrator(s).  Letting Automatic Updates install the Service Pack with its default settings could disable some of your current software packages, and cause unnecessary headaches for you and your administrators.

Network Administrators

• There are major enhancements to the Wireless Network Configuration utility that is included in Windows XP.  Changes include: a new and improved SSID browser, better support for Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), and support for Wireless Provisioning Services (WPS).  For more details, see http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0804.mspx
• There are over 600 new Group Policy settings for you to tinker with.  See http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dacf095f-fdbd-4c50-bdaa-96ff9f00e007&displaylang=en
• You can install SP2 centrally using SMS 2.0 or 2003 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;842844
• However, SP2 breaks most of the useful functionality of SMS 2003, but there are hotfixes for SMS 2003: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sms/sms2003/techfaq/tfaq03.mspx
• It is possible to temporarily prevent Windows’ Automatic Updates from downloading and installing SP2 by modifying a registry entry.  For more details, see  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/sp2aumng.mspx
• The user interface for the Internet Connection Firewall is actually not very much different from the XP SP1 version.  However, it adds one feature that users of third party desktop-level software firewalls will recognize: automated whitelisting of programs that try to “listen” on particular ports.  If a new program tries to listen on a port, Windows prompts the user to add it to the list of trusted apps.  It also adds the capability to temporarily disable all “exceptions” to the default “block all incoming requests” policy.
• Instead of having separate firewall policies for each network interface, the same set of rules applies to all network interfaces
• For the absolute nitty gritty details of the changes in functionality to Windows XP, see http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7bd948d7-b791-40b6-8364-685b84158c78&DisplayLang=en