Rollout of SP2...

**iceman** · August 24th, 2004, 01:39 PM

As the new Service Manager for our onsite computer services company (yay! promotion), I now have to decide how to handle the SP2 rollout for our 400 clients. With each client having between 5 and 30 computers this decision could be very critical to our relationship with our customers. Any ideas? Have any of you decided what your company will do? I know the basic rule, wait 1-3 months before install so how strongly should I suggest they wait?

**BOB IROC** · August 24th, 2004, 06:33 PM

I am the NetWork Admin of a high school and I decided to roll it out on a few machines and see how it works. So far it has been fine and I love the pop up blocker and extra security features. It really helps in a school environment where kids like to browse where they are not supposed to be. The only problem I came across is that with the firewall option enabled, I was unable to fully see all the computers on the network and the my ghost server could not communicate with them. Instead of fixing the problem, I turned it off and I am letting my hardware firewall do its job. Havent seen any application problems as of yet, so try it on a few computers to see, just make a back up just in case.

**rgharper** · August 24th, 2004, 07:44 PM

Originally Posted by iceman

As the new Service Manager for our onsite computer services company (yay! promotion), I now have to decide how to handle the SP2 rollout for our 400 clients. With each client having between 5 and 30 computers this decision could be very critical to our relationship with our customers. Any ideas? Have any of you decided what your company will do? I know the basic rule, wait 1-3 months before install so how strongly should I suggest they wait?

I would wait about one to three minutes before installing SP2. There's a lot of hype in the media about how it "breaks" things but 99.99% of the breakage is due to the firewall - easily enough tuned-up to avoid these problems.

If these are home users I don't think I'd wait even that long.

**BOB IROC** · August 24th, 2004, 08:17 PM

Originally Posted by rgharper

There's a lot of hype in the media about how it "breaks" things but 99.99% of the breakage is due to the firewall - easily enough tuned-up to avoid these problems.

I agree!!

**chucko** · August 25th, 2004, 10:35 AM

I've installed it on a few PC's to test (my own and at clients) and have had no real problems.

Most "broken apps" are firewall related. Many other of the so-called problems after installation are because of spyware and/or virus contamination of the PC's before SP2 is installed. You need to make sure that the PC's are virus and spyware free before installation, or you WILL have problems.

Case in point....I put sp2 on a XP home PC that was running current NAV 2003, but after the install IE would crash whenever going to the Internet. It would open ok with a blank home page, but would crash whenever a page on the net was loaded.

I initially thought that it was a SP2 issue, but after going through the PC extensively, it ended up being a virus. Once the virus was removed, all was well. The PC worked OK prior to installing SP2.

FWIW, it was this virus

**Squiny** · August 25th, 2004, 11:26 AM

Depending on what software you run, you may want to hold off deployment untill you fully test it or contact your software vendors about it. I'm an IT manager at a local bank and its causing issues with some of our custom software.

**bftchevy** · August 25th, 2004, 12:14 PM

I'm in charge of 75 computers and so far I have been rolling out SP2 slowly. I've installed it on about ten computers so far and haven't seen any problems.

Though I am making the decision to install on a computer-by-computer, user-by-user decision. I don't think you can say everyone install it now.

Right now when someone asks me if they should install it or not I tell them I recommend installing it but to use caution. Make sure they back up critical data and understand the risks of installing it.

**iceman** · August 25th, 2004, 03:41 PM

Think case by case is a way to go. BTW looks as if MEMtester is toast with SP2. Also Simple calendar4. (Promotion, and on front page of Windrivers same day, double Yay!)

**gtiseb** · August 26th, 2004, 08:55 AM

I got about 60 systems in my immediate office and about 200 out and about town. We've recently upgraded alot of systems so i'd say about 20% are XP all pro. in the office here I have 10 machines running xp and I installed SP2 on all of them. Each machine runs a fax server client to connect to a fax server, VNC as a service for remote admin, and client management database with the database sitting on a file server. The only problems I've had was punching hole throught he firewall for the vnc and resetting alot of the DCOM changes so that the fax client could connect anonymously to the fax server (mostly tedious ). I would however follow some of the recommendations given here in regards to virus or spyware before install sp2, all our systems runa local virus check and spyware check everynight as well as defrags and volume ghosting with a report being emailed to me in the morning. None of my xp systems ahd anything that caused them to wonk out. MY sister's pc however had a couple of virii in it and the sp2 install went nuts. I had to re-install from scatch for her.

**mattyx** · August 26th, 2004, 11:54 AM

how did you punch the hole through the firewall for VNC? i installed SP2 and couldn't see my network anymore and the firewall said it couldn't start. uninstalled and all is fine. may need to do a fresh install and apply sp2 up front then go from there. seems teh firewall part really messes up being able to see and be seen on the network.....

Originally Posted by gtiseb

I got about 60 systems in my immediate office and about 200 out and about town. We've recently upgraded alot of systems so i'd say about 20% are XP all pro. in the office here I have 10 machines running xp and I installed SP2 on all of them. Each machine runs a fax server client to connect to a fax server, VNC as a service for remote admin, and client management database with the database sitting on a file server. The only problems I've had was punching hole throught he firewall for the vnc and resetting alot of the DCOM changes so that the fax client could connect anonymously to the fax server (mostly tedious ). I would however follow some of the recommendations given here in regards to virus or spyware before install sp2, all our systems runa local virus check and spyware check everynight as well as defrags and volume ghosting with a report being emailed to me in the morning. None of my xp systems ahd anything that caused them to wonk out. MY sister's pc however had a couple of virii in it and the sp2 install went nuts. I had to re-install from scatch for her.

**+Daemon+** · August 26th, 2004, 12:47 PM

been testing it on 4 machines here in a live environment, and alot of the applications they say doesnt work does, thing is all the hype bad press is only towards the firewall, I yet have seen anything about the actual os, just turn off the firewall your fine