XP SP2 Be careful !!

[CountDuckula]

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Software firewalls are for the most part useless. If you're that concerned about security get yourself a decent router and lock it down. Unfortunetly most people who would rely on a software router would have no idea how to effectivly do this.

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I do have a router, and have it pretty well locked down. However, it is possible to pick something up that will surreptitiously open connections from your computer (either to spy on you, or to have your computer assist in a DOS attack, or to turn it into a spam generator). That's where software firewalls come in; if anything tries to access the Internet, ZoneAlarm pops up and tells me about it. If I know what it is, and I want it to go ahead, I check the "Remember this setting" box, and click on "Allow". If I don't recognize it, I know its time to dig into it. Also, it tells me if an application that I previously gave permission to has changed; that keeps a virus from infecting the application and riding on its permissions to do its thing.

I have Norton, Spybot S&D, AdAware, and ZoneAlarm Pro. I feel I need all of those as well as my router to keep my system secure.

-Mike

[CountDuckula]

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I agree, at least in the generic sense, but I have ZoneAlarm Pro. Will I run into any problems when I apply SP2?

If you use a third-party firewall that you would prefer over the built-in windows firewall, then after installing SP2, you need to go into the security panel, disable the windows firewall, and select the option for "I have a firewall of my own that I will manually maintain" or something to that effect.

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Thanks much!


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The same is true if you have an antivirus application that is not one of the big-market ones, which won't be autodetected by SP2.

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I have Norton, so I should be ok there.

-Mike

[Synergistic Explosions]

Even if you downloaded the update and it caused problems whats the big deal? All you have to do is go to system restore and set it back to the day before you did the update.

[shandrakor]

SP1 wouldn't download on my computer, something about a missing key? Will SP2 work?

No, because you have a pirated copy of Windows XP installed. Thanks for playing, though.

[babigm]

I've had this machine upgraded since the network install came out a few days ago, and it's been fine. I've accessed Emipre Poker, UltimateBet, Absolute Poker and PokerRoom within that time, and all have worked. You will probably get a screen that says "Windows is blocking this application, unblock?" Just click the unblock button and you'll be fine.

I think the fear has been a little overblown, SP2 isn't doing anything radically new, it enabling by default what was already there, instead of leaving it optional. Automatic updates has been there since at least XP, maybe it was in 2000, I can't remember. It just automatically downloads (and installs if you want it to) the updates on the windows update site instead of visiting and updating manually, there's nothing inheritently evil about it. If you don't feel comfortable with that you can turn it off; it was put there because most people don't visit the update site that often and a lot of exploits that are fixed in newer patches were still causing damage, due to all the unpatched machines.

The firewall works just like any other software firewall, it blocks programs by default, then as you use them it asks if you want to keep it blocked or not, that way you can tell when there's spyware or viruses trying to access the internet.

For the record, I'm in no way affliated with Microsoft, other then using their OS. Sorry if this was a little elementary, but I thought someone might benefit.

[Richard Berg]

SP2 certainly IS doing some radically new things. It modifies the very guts of the event handler in order to prevent certain kinds of self-modifying code; it cripples parts of the raw sockets API; for that matter, it introduces new features in a free service pack for the first time since the middle of NT4's life cycle. (Apple charges for these things, ya know...)

And yet, these are precisely the reasons that every end user should upgrade NOW. The list of applications that break is astonishingly short -- usually well-deserved (cough *norton* cough) at that -- and the fix is rarely more than a recompile. The comment about SP1 vs. piracy above is true, but as seriously as MS takes its licensing policies it did not add any newly cracked corporate keys to the SP2 installer. In short, if they think increasing the percentage of secure machines open to the Net is more important than millions in short-term revenue, you should too.

-Richard, industry guru, former MS employee, no longer a shareholder

[Ro-me-ro]

Perhaps you can help me - I have a laptop which comes with XP Home, however it is not an OS disk as such, but a disk I can use to start my system from scratch again.

I was reading microsofts web site about adding the backup facility to XP home - you need to insert the OS disk and manually add it... however I can't do this for the reasons stated above. Any ideas how I can add this backup facility so that I can update to SP2 without fear with a backup of my system just in case.

Thanks in advance for any assistance anyone can give me with this matter.

Ellis

[t_perkin]

I heard the reason they didn't bother adding any new corporate keys to the banned list was that there was already a key generator available so there was no point.

I can't be arsed to talk about this but here are my views:

1: You are responsible for the security of your computer. The computer is not a house, there is no multilateral internet police and so the internet is in essence a vigilante "world". If you don't like it then:

a) Unplug from the internet
b) Learn how to use another operating system
c) Learn how to secure your current OS


2: MS XP *is* badly written, but nowhere near as bad as '98

3: It *is* possible to write software that it is impossible to write viruses for but it would be prohibitively expensive for the functionality offered by windows (or any other modern desktop OS).

Not entirely sure about this one but pretty positive:

4: When it talks about multiplayer games it means video games (Quake etc.) where you can set up a server for yourself. SP2 may stop this. All poker rooms are clients, they are not open to requests and so will not be affected by SP2.

Tim

ps. the key gen does work.

[gojacketz]

I have had the XP Professional Service Pack 2 Beta running on two of my CPUs for probably a month and have not seen any problems at all. Granted, I do not run the firewall that they supply you - I still run Zone Alarm behind my own router. I played with their firewall, and it is a bitch.

Gojacketz

[Richard Berg]

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I heard the reason they didn't bother adding any new corporate keys to the banned list was that there was already a key generator available so there was no point.

[/ QUOTE ]
That is also true. However there exists a press statement from Brian Valentine (or one of those guys, I forgot) that backs up my reasoning, while MS has not publically disclosed any information on whether they've even tried to extend corporate keying to circumvent generators.

(edit) it was Gary Schare