Pat’s been pestering me since April or so to install Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). Now that it’s finally available through Windows Update, I decided to install it. After letting the “Download complete, ready to install” window sit annoyingly unminimizable on my screen while I completed my work for a few hours, I finally clicked the install button. It didn’t take SP2 too long to completely screw up my system.
Basically, when it rebooted I was met with the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death. Some driver issue. I couldn’t get Windows to tell me what driver was causing the problem specifically, I couldn’t get the boot logger working, and although any trifling signs that I did find all pointed to the Promise SATA controller on my motherboard, the drive was completely acessible in Safe Mode.
In essence, SP2 crippled my computer and necessitated more downtime and troublshooting than I was willing to put up with. I think I rebooted the machine about 8 times for various reasons, including getting version numbers from the hardware during bootup and switching between safe mode and normal mode to test new configurations. I’m tired of rebooting. My computer worked under SP1, and I think that an “insecure” working computer is better than a “secure” BSOD. I must admit that the BSOD makes the system pretty secure. It also makes the system pretty darn worthless.
Thank goodness for system restore.
I’m now back at SP1, working just fine. Although I have noticed that Windows Update has somehow managed to update components without my approval within the past month. For example, Windows Update is now much different looking than it once was. There are windows with little shields on them that I never had before. Also, my Internet Explorer (which I only use when testing, which I was doing tonight, so I am currently annoyed) is behaving oddly - not displaying the javascript debugger when I click on the menu command, and sometimes not even showing the menu command. At one point, I ventured into the Internet Options, and found only one tab (Security) with nothing on it. But when I did get that window to appear, there seem to be a lot more security levels than I remember there ever being. Once again, that’s something I just noticed while looking for a useful feature, not something that I’ll ever use.
So there. I tried the stupid Service Pack. It sucked. I put everything back to the way I had it. I doubt I will try installing SP2 again soon, if ever. A perfect-every-boot Knoppix disk is just sitting here waiting…
