SP2 drove me to open source

[Gordon]

Don Taylor wrote:
|| SP2 broke something in Windows Explorer and nobody knows what it
|| was,

But that's ONLY for those who posted the problem - it's like going to the
doctor, you only see the few who are ill, not the millions who are NOT
ill.....
SP2 has been successfully installed on MILLIONS of computers!

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

LOL.. love the way that you gave one impression in your first post, then
added all of the stuff about your company using Macs and Linux already in
your second post..

I have been into Linux newsgroups and have not seen Windows users taking
shots at the people in there.. so why do Linux users/lovers feel the need to
do it in here?

Just use whatever your preference is and let it go at that..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user

 

[Jone Doe]

Marketing and particularly sales folks can easily tell you the
answer to your question, if you piss off a customer sufficiently
they will carry a grudge against you, and tell other customers,
for a long long time.

Me, I still use Windows, I just wish they would fix the problems.

I suppose we will eventually see him on a Linux group complaining and going
back to Windows.

 

[Leythos]

SP2 broke something in Windows Explorer and nobody knows what it was, or
they aren't telling. Search the group for the hundreds of summary
postings I made in response to people posting this particular problem,
you can then see the very similar descriptions of all these folks, and
that pretty much none of the claimed causes fixed this for almost
anyone.

Maybe as you suggest you can assist or people will learn from this.

Maybe if you stated what the problem is, in detail, we might be able to
help you. I've only seen two problems with IE after SP2, and it was
because scripting was removed on the workstation - reinstalling XP
scripting fixed the problem, but it took me about a week (part time) to
get the answer.

 

[Tom]

Thanks to Microsoft's WindowsXP SP2, I have finally made the move to open
source applications. I've wanted to make the move for some time but some
laziness on my part has delayed me. Thanks, Billy, for pushing out the
SP2
and specifically the security center because that horrid piece of
programming
(I call SP2 the new WinME) finally made me so angry and frustrated with
you
and your company that I built up a Linux box at home and will soon be
migrating all of my personal equipment over to the Penguin. If I am
browsing
and come across some content that will only work in your non-W3c standards
compliant browser, I refuse to view it. DId you notice that FireFox 1.0
was
downloaded over a million times the first DAY it was available?
Hallelujiah!


I am the systems administrator at a television station and so am used to
dealing with new technology. I have never had as many problems with a
single
piece of software (and let me tell you, video-editing, TV production, and
graphics software can be extremely touchy and hard to work with) as I have
with SP2. It has bolluxed up so many systems at my station, rendering
some
applications totally unusable, that I have removed it from every machine
I
have. I've talked to the administration and we are looking into moving
away
from all MS products and following the growing trend of dismantling our
Windows infrastructure.

I truly hope that the recent trend in computing to move away from the
monopolistic domination of MS is but the first scratchings of the
proverbial
writing on the wall that will soon say that MS is on its way out. Maybe
it
won't come soon, certainly not soon enough for any thinking and rational
IT
person, but I think it is coming and on that day I will rejoice.

Thanks, again, Billy. SP2 did it's job well enough for me.

Well, you have all the right to make a change, but if you're an
administrator in the business type you claim, you wouldn't have come here
and made it a point to a public MS newsgroup; you would have simply made the
change and went on with your corporate life. Other than any real technical
reasons why you changed, it sounds more like hate than anything, regarding
your rant.

 

[NoNoBadDog!]

Thanks to Microsoft's WindowsXP SP2, I have finally made the move to open
source applications. I've wanted to make the move for some time but some
laziness on my part has delayed me. Thanks, Billy, for pushing out the
SP2
and specifically the security center because that horrid piece of
programming
(I call SP2 the new WinME) finally made me so angry and frustrated with
you
and your company that I built up a Linux box at home and will soon be
migrating all of my personal equipment over to the Penguin. If I am
browsing
and come across some content that will only work in your non-W3c standards
compliant browser, I refuse to view it. DId you notice that FireFox 1.0
was
downloaded over a million times the first DAY it was available?
Hallelujiah!


I am the systems administrator at a television station and so am used to
dealing with new technology. I have never had as many problems with a
single
piece of software (and let me tell you, video-editing, TV production, and
graphics software can be extremely touchy and hard to work with) as I have
with SP2. It has bolluxed up so many systems at my station, rendering
some
applications totally unusable, that I have removed it from every machine
I
have. I've talked to the administration and we are looking into moving
away
from all MS products and following the growing trend of dismantling our
Windows infrastructure.

I truly hope that the recent trend in computing to move away from the
monopolistic domination of MS is but the first scratchings of the
proverbial
writing on the wall that will soon say that MS is on its way out. Maybe
it
won't come soon, certainly not soon enough for any thinking and rational
IT
person, but I think it is coming and on that day I will rejoice.

Thanks, again, Billy. SP2 did it's job well enough for me.

I feel sorry for the TV station. If you cannot handle something simple as a
Service Pack, you don't deserve the title. Goodbye, good luck, and good
riddance. You won't be missed. One less clueless end user.
SP2 does not cause any problems for over 95% of those who install it. For
those that do have problems, it is *ALWAYS* due to a flakey installation of
windows, or a system that has *NOT* been properly maintained. In addition,
some choose not to follow the installation instructions, and this can result
in system instability.

Enjoy your foray into open source. If you think you had problems with a
Windows environment, just wait until you deploy your new open source
environment...you have no idea what headaches you are getting yourself into.
We won't even touch upon the subject of having to re-educate your users on
the changes that the move to open source will bring, and the fact that they
will not be able to do the things they could in the Windows environment in
the same fashion.

I give you 6 months and you'll find yourself coming back to a MS
environment, simply for ease of troubleshooting and integration.

Bobby.

 

[Guest]

LOL.. love the way that you gave one impression in your first post, then
added all of the stuff about your company using Macs and Linux already in
your second post..

Hmm...I think the only number I actally used was that there are about 300
workstations here. 4 of them are Macs and 3 of them are Linux. Everything
else, and 99.999999% of my job, is on Windows boxes.

 

[Don Taylor]

Don Taylor wrote:
|| SP2 broke something in Windows Explorer and nobody knows what it
|| was,

But that's ONLY for those who posted the problem - it's like going to the
doctor, you only see the few who are ill, not the millions who are NOT
ill.....
SP2 has been successfully installed on MILLIONS of computers!

Absolutely, and that tells me I'm not sick how?

 

[Don Taylor]

Maybe if you stated what the problem is, in detail, we might be able to
help you. I've only seen two problems with IE after SP2, and it was
because scripting was removed on the workstation - reinstalling XP
scripting fixed the problem, but it took me about a week (part time) to
get the answer.

You asked for it

For me, specifically and in detail. Damn clean machine, haven't
had a virus or spyware or even games on the machine since 2000,
when I tried to help some poor slob in the office with his excel
sheet and he gave me a macro virus. Used the machine every day
with amazingly few problems and nothing like this. Installed SP2
and EVERYTHING that used Windows Explorer refused every click, just
beeped at me. Absolutely reproducible. Selecting files in the
recycling bin, opening Windows Explorer, opening Control panel,
opening folder shortcuts, doing Search, all of them. Scanned for
the incessantly chanted "it is all spyware and viruses with multiple
different vendor's tools", nothing. Scanned for "it is all bad
applications" and found nothing. Tried disabling all 75 shell
extensions, including all 73 of the Microsoft supplied, didn't fix
this. Tried asking in this group, no solution. Went to Microsoft
SP2 support and spent three months repeating all this for them,
changing the boot, disabling drivers, sending them the ntuser.dat,
nothing. During all this recorded 200+ other people who also found
that immediately after installing Sp2 they found the things that
are based on Windows Explorer would lock up or crash. Half a dozen
or less ever reported success with any of the above suggested fixes.
The handful who did report success seem likely that they had some
other problem, like a dead networked drive that was waiting for
timeout.

As I said, in the end Microsoft support finally stopped telling me
to try something new and quit responding to mail, they couldn't fix
it. I hope that you might have a better idea.

Thanks

Here is the list of all the suggested "reasons" for this that I
posted, so that people with this would have in one place all the
things to try. As I previously said, if you search for my replies
to other people's postings you can see the similarities between the
hundreds of postings that people made when they found this problem.

New developments listed at the bottom of this, but still no fix, yet.

If you have recently installed SP2 on your computer then
there have now been over 200 people reporting very similar problems
to what you are reporting. Some find that anything which uses
Windows Explorer (Recycle bin, folder shortcuts, control panel,
search, etc) all have a similar problem. Some find that right
clicks are their major problem. Some find any click. Some find
it crashes on open. Some find it refuses any clicks. Some claim
they know how to fix this but I've read the tens of thousands of
postings on SP2 and I don't think you will find any with "the fix"
for this, at least not yet. Less than a dozen people ever reported
finding a solution for this.

But, some find it will work when you boot in safe mode.

And, some find it will work when you create a new user and switch
to that user to try it.

One of those might be a temporary work-around till you get an answer.

Some claim it is all spyware and viruses but I haven't seen any
posting that confirmed this for the Windows Explorer problem. I
carefully and repeatedly checked, no viruses or spyware and my
windows explorer locks up every time. It probably doesn't hurt
much to check for viruses but if people tell you that is your
problem and you find nothing then please post letting everyone
know this is one more case where the virus chant didn't work.
<<<Late breaking news, after hundreds of people reporting this
problem, ONE person did let me know that trendmicro actually found
a WORM_SDDROP.A virus/worm, he removed that and it appeared to solve
his problem, so that's 10,000 times people chanting "it's all viruses
and spyware" and one correct diagnosis>>>

Some claim it is all "bad applications" like Divx or Spy Sweeper
being installed that is responsible for this, a very few people
have confirmed this appeared to be the source of their problem but
others have these installed and have no problem, most reporting the
problem don't have these installed and still have the problem. I
don't have either and it locks up every time. And amazingly and
unfortunately, even six months after SP2 has been out there is still
no list of specific files known to cause this or untility that can
scan for these problems.

Some claim it is all "ShellExtensions", little accessory gadgets
that sort of script extra cute features. The advice for that is
to install free ShellExView and to try (carefully) disabling these
features one at a time, if turning one off doesn't do anything then
turn it back on and try again. I did that with all 75 at once and
it made no difference at all. Two people have reported that disabling
one extension they had did appear to fix their problem. You can search
old postings in the group via google and learn about ShellExView, to
see whether you would want to try using this to scan your system.

Some claim it is all "corrupted user profiles" that are the cause
of this but I've never been able to track down a tool that would
check a user profile to see if it was corrupted. There was one web
page that Microsoft had which described a way of reporting errors
found in this but this doesn't appear feasible for XP. There is
nothing that can confirm this is the case.

You can try to uninstall SP2, there are various descriptions of how
to do that, using Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs or using a
Restore point or doing a Repair Install of Windows or reformatting
your hard drive, each of those is a bigger hammer than the previous
method, but a number of folks have reported having various problems
when they try to remove SP2 or after they do so. To be fair, SP2
probably fixes thousands of small and massive bugs in Windows XP
and if you can get it to work it is probably a good thing to have.

You can escalate to Microsoft, go to
http://support.microsoft.com/windowsxpsp2 and give them all the
details and clues and patterns you can find. There is no guarantee
that their analysis or directions will be correct or even not make
it worse. They told me I must "have some corrupted files, repair
windows back to install state and then reinstall SP2 twice while
in Safe mode." Before I did that someone posted the "switch user"
workaround that let me get by temporarily. I sent email saying
that if it worked for one user then it seemed less likely it was
"some corrupted files" and asked if they still wanted me to blow
windows away. They have not reponded to that in a number of days
now. But I can imagine what it is like inside now.

You can try each one of these things and see if any one of them
helps, but don't expect a fix.

<<<New Developments>>> I just spent another two hours in chat with
Microsoft Support, he changed his diagnosis a dozen times, going
back to things we had already concluded had nothing to do with this,
he thought that a file might have been corrupted during installation
and this would leave an error message in /windows/setuperr.log,
that file is empty, so he thought there might be answers in
/windows/setupapi.log but he said he was not trained to know how
to interpret that file, and the final conclusion was that he didn't
know how to fix this one and I was "escalated", again.

So the next guy had me run msconfig, in the startup tab disable all
items, in the service tab hide all Microsoft services and disable
all, reboot the machine, tell it not to show or launch the config
window... If the problem had disappeared after this was done then
the instructions were to begin enabling these items one at a time
until the one was found that made this fail. My Windows Explorer
problem was unchanged and I was "escalated" again.

So the next guy had me download a copy of Process Explorer and dump
out all the dll's that are connected with Windows Explorer and mail
them to him. Just like the situation with shell extensions, I see
that all but a couple of these are Microsoft supplied. After he
had seen the list he asked that I rename some of the non-Microsoft
dll's and reboot, likely to see if they were responsible. The
problem was still there and I've restored the original names. Now
we seem to be back to square one and he's asking again if this
happens in Safe mode, which we have already repeatedly covered.

Now we've sent him HijackThis logs, 3 megabytes of ntuser.dat, he
keeps claiming they DO have a process for figuring this out but
there just isn't anything that can diagnose what the problem is and
they just keep trying things until the problem seems to go away.
And he asks me to send him HijackThis logs again. He admits that
lots of people have problems with Windows Explorer and that usually
they can figure something out but that there is no list of known
file names/sizes/dates/version numbers that fail, there is no list
of steps a person can follow to track this down. And they spent a
billion bucks making Sp2 more secure and bug free! But that doesn't
put anything in the event log for Windows Explorer failures and the
flood of error reports send to them when people have this happens
apparently doesn't give them any clue what the cause is either.

Another week goes by before he responds... and he didn't find
anything in the HijackThis logs this time either. And he didn't
find anything in ntuser.dat. Now he has me back to msconfig, turning
everything off in msconfig for selective startup and rebooting,
with a cute little note that doing this isn't recommended for anyone
but a pro to do. The problem is still there. As a bonus, his
directions have now blown away my Windows activation and it is
telling me that the computer has changed and I have to reactivate,
even though nothing has changed in months.

That didn't do solve the problem so now he concludes it must be one
of the hardware drivers and he tells me to start disabling those
until we find the culprit. But this is senseless, we have already
ruled that out because switching to a freshly created new user makes
the problem go away. He hasn't answered whether he still wants me
to disable the drivers yet.

Can you say "clueless groping, hoping for a miracle"? 3 1/2 weeks
of playing this game with them and no sign that any progress has
been made.

So I have repeatedly told them I don't just want to randomly change
things until we don't notice the problem anymore, I'm going to track
down the real root cause of this one and we are going to get a fix
for this.

I hope something in this helps someone. But it appears that the
large majority of people never get a fix for the "Windows Explorer"
problem. If someone tells you to try something and it doesn't help
then please make a posting so we can start accumulating what
suggestions don't do any good. And if someone tells you something
that does work then please report it.

 

[Charles Blair]

You answered your own problem.

If you logon as a different user and the problem goes away, then that means
there is something corrupted in your profile.

I don't know how experienced you are with windows profiles, but there are
hundreds of files and thousands of registry keys that make up a profile,
most of which can corrupt a profile if they are corrupted themselves.

Why waste time fixing the probably unfixable profile?

Just use the new one.

 

[Leythos]

I hope something in this helps someone. But it appears that the
large majority of people never get a fix for the "Windows Explorer"
problem. If someone tells you to try something and it doesn't help
then please make a posting so we can start accumulating what
suggestions don't do any good. And if someone tells you something
that does work then please report it.

Based on the description of your problem and that you got a simple
macro-virus from your friend, I would suggest that you at least were
partially compromised, yea, you've herd it before, but all modern
antivirus scanners do Macro-Viruses with ease. That also seems to indicate
you were not running any AV software, were you?

As for Explorer issues - you talked about 2000, then Sp2, is this problem
computer a dual boot? Is it a upgraded 2000 machine that is now XP?

As for your problem, I suspect that it's Microsoft Scripting that's the
problem:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...43-7E4B-4622-86EB-95A22B832CAA&displaylang=en

the link may not work if it wraps, but that's the download for XP's
scripting engine, reinstall it and see if that helps.

 

[Don Taylor]

You answered your own problem.

If you logon as a different user and the problem goes away, then that means
there is something corrupted in your profile.

Actually, the Microsoft folks took an image of all this and checked on
their test machines, shovelled them tens of megabytes at their request,
nope, they found nothing wrong with the image, it ran on their end.

I don't know how experienced you are with windows profiles, but there are
hundreds of files and thousands of registry keys that make up a profile,
most of which can corrupt a profile if they are corrupted themselves.

And astonishingly, there isn't any way to catch the thousands of possible
errors and report the problem. There was one tool put together for NT
that allowed capturing and reporting these errors but that doesn't work
on XP, according to the second level escalation support person. Even
more astonishing is that Windows Explorer carefully ensures that it does
not record anything in the event log when it crashes, on purpose I presume.

Why waste time fixing the probably unfixable profile?

I was nuts enough (having spent a decade writing critical software
systems that just could not be allowed to fail) that I actually
wanted to help track down the real cause and provoke someone to fix
it. I realize that is insane and what everyone wants to do is just
cover up and ignore the bugs.

Just use the new one.

Actually, as I wrote, for some people creating a different user
didn't work, just as for some safe mode didn't work.


I suspect that it really isn't "the profile", based on reading
hundreds of these reports and quizzing some of the people who
had this problem. But blaming it on something that nobody can
diagnose is a perfect scapegoat. I still cannot understand why
so many people had nothing like this and the instant that they
installed to SP2 they suddenly had "a corrupted profile."

And even with the bandaids and work-arounds I now use I still have
Windows explorer crashing half a dozen or a few dozen times a day now.

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Velo

There was no mention of numbers in your original post, and absolutely no
mention of Linux and MacOS used at your workplace.. that's ZERO %..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user

 

[Don Taylor]

Based on the description of your problem and that you got a simple
macro-virus from your friend, I would suggest that you at least were
partially compromised, yea, you've herd it before, but all modern
antivirus scanners do Macro-Viruses with ease. That also seems to indicate
you were not running any AV software, were you?

It is true, that was a simple macro virus. If it really matters, the
macro actually never got to run on my machine, someone else realized
it was infected before I opened the sheet on my computer, but the file
had been on my box so I counted that as an infection. And I made sure
that never ever happened to me again.

That virus was ancient history, long before XP or even the current
computer or any of the current problems, I was just trying to satisfy
those who immediately begin chanting "it is all viruses and spyware"
when any problem is described. We had a wall around the outside.
We never did track down where he got it from. The guess was that
he got it from someone outside and carried it in on a floppy somehow.

As for Explorer issues - you talked about 2000, then Sp2, is this problem
computer a dual boot? Is it a upgraded 2000 machine that is now XP?

My apologies that I wasn't clear, that was the YEAR 2000, not the OS 2000.
And, nope, brand new bare bare hardware with XP installed on fresh drives.
We made the jump from 98SE, put the old machines on the shelf, and were
going to go to ME but before that was installed we went to XP.

As for your problem, I suspect that it's Microsoft Scripting that's the
problem:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...43-7E4B-4622-86EB-95A22B832CAA&displaylang=en

the link may not work if it wraps, but that's the download for XP's
scripting engine, reinstall it and see if that helps.

Ok, I'm up for anything, nobody else has a clue how to fix this, I've
been told the silliest things are definitely absolutely positiviely
the cause of all this, just today we still see someone chanting "the
only people who have problems with SP2 are the ones who don't know what
they are doing and did it to themselves." But I'll go along with
your idea. Let's settle this one.

If I might ask, strictly for plausibility reasons, WHY would several
hundred people all who had no problems with windows explorer before
SP2 and immediately see these problems when they upgraded to SP2 have
scripting be the problem? Maybe if you can explain your reasoning
and evidence I can recognize more clues and we can track this down
and fix this for hundreds of people.

For example, what scripting is it that would be causing the failure?
The problem is almost always evident in at least two things that are
based on Windows Explorer, and often everything using Windows Explorer.

How can I get some definite diagnostic evidence that your analysis
is the cause? (Something better than "well, we blew away a bunch of
crap and we installed a bunch of crap and now we don't see it now so
that must have been it"?) I'm not saying you are wrong, I just want
to prove what the cause was. I'm really trying to avoid the random
changes until bug hides for a while methodology. That is what got
every one of us into this mess of Windows in the first place.

Believe it or not, I'm really actually honestly trying to expose the
root cause of this problem with conclusive evidence, something that
has not been able to be done by anybody in the last six months.

If it matters any, I've actually started writing and running small
scripts, months after SP2 was installed and the problem began. They
seem to be working, at least as well as the documentation for scripting
allows.

Thank you

 

[Leythos]

Ok, I'm up for anything, nobody else has a clue how to fix this, I've
been told the silliest things are definitely absolutely positiviely the
cause of all this, just today we still see someone chanting "the only
people who have problems with SP2 are the ones who don't know what they
are doing and did it to themselves." But I'll go along with your idea.
Let's settle this one.

Service Packs have always been a gamble, and in most cases if you tested
it on a non-production computer before installing it, you would see what
the problems were. For those without a second computer, you backup all
your data (as instructed) and then apply the SP and test until you
determine if it works. I didn't install SP2 on any clients computers for
months, as I was testing it against several similar systems to determine
if there would be a problem.

If I might ask, strictly for plausibility reasons, WHY would several
hundred people all who had no problems with windows explorer before SP2
and immediately see these problems when they upgraded to SP2 have
scripting be the problem? Maybe if you can explain your reasoning and
evidence I can recognize more clues and we can track this down and fix
this for hundreds of people.

It all goes back to one simple thing - Windows XP runs on a mass of
different system, most of them are not something that can be tested
against as there are soooooo many variations of even the Dell system, just
imagine the rest of the computers in the world. Windows XP SP2 was not
forced on anyone, there were clear instructions from MS on how to install
it and to make your (anyone's) machine ready for it, and even the
parts/systems vendors have specific notes/updates for people installing
SP2.

If you have several hundred people with very similar problems, it would
stand to reason that you should have been able to determine what was
common between all of those systems and then determine a corrective path,
but I've not seen the analysis of those hundreds of systems.

For example, what scripting is it that would be causing the failure? The
problem is almost always evident in at least two things that are based
on Windows Explorer, and often everything using Windows Explorer.

In my case, we installed SP2 on a clients set of computers, all of them
were Dell computers that were purchased with XP (no-SP1) at the same time,
about 1 year ago. All computers have the SAME parts/hardware/applications.
One of the systems, after installing SP2, would not allow searches, didn't
show the proper IE Help/About information (it was missing lots), and there
seemed to be no answer from anyone, even MS, about what caused it. I
searched for a week and started putting reports/fixes together from people
that had pieces of the problem and their fixes (and I've been doing this
since the 70's) and determined (through t/e) that scripting was the
problem - I installed the scripting package and everything started working
again.

How can I get some definite diagnostic evidence that your analysis is
the cause? (Something better than "well, we blew away a bunch of crap
and we installed a bunch of crap and now we don't see it now so that
must have been it"?) I'm not saying you are wrong, I just want to prove
what the cause was. I'm really trying to avoid the random changes until
bug hides for a while methodology. That is what got every one of us
into this mess of Windows in the first place.

I can't explain it or even tell you how/why it worked for me. I've had two
serious SP2 problems on a just over 1000 machines that we manage for a
diverse group of clients. Of those, one needed a BIOS update, and the
other needed the scripting reinstalled. Since you say that you are having
problems with Explorer and searching (which was also a symptom that we
experienced, not just IE) I suggested the fix that worked for me. I
suspected that you had already done the basics, and this can't hurt.

Believe it or not, I'm really actually honestly trying to expose the
root cause of this problem with conclusive evidence, something that has
not been able to be done by anybody in the last six months.

If it matters any, I've actually started writing and running small
scripts, months after SP2 was installed and the problem began. They
seem to be working, at least as well as the documentation for scripting
allows.

If you've lived with it for 6 months, then it's time to either try the
scripting or just do a wipe/reinstall to give you a fully working machine.

 

[Don Taylor]

Service Packs have always been a gamble, and in most cases if you tested
it on a non-production computer before installing it, you would see what
the problems were. For those without a second computer, you backup all
your data (as instructed) and then apply the SP and test until you
determine if it works. I didn't install SP2 on any clients computers for
months, as I was testing it against several similar systems to determine
if there would be a problem.

I AM the guinea pig here, we are STILL waiting before we risk tring it
on the other computers, thinking a miracle might happen and this might
find a fix. But the machines here are not all identical, so fixing it
on mine probably says little or nothing about the others.

It all goes back to one simple thing - Windows XP runs on a mass of
different system, most of them are not something that can be tested
against as there are soooooo many variations of even the Dell system, just
imagine the rest of the computers in the world. Windows XP SP2 was not
forced on anyone, there were clear instructions from MS on how to install
it and to make your (anyone's) machine ready for it, and even the
parts/systems vendors have specific notes/updates for people installing
SP2.

If you have several hundred people with very similar problems, it would
stand to reason that you should have been able to determine what was
common between all of those systems and then determine a corrective path,
but I've not seen the analysis of those hundreds of systems.

I keep saying this and I just must not be clear, this is several hundred
different people spread across the world, look at some of this to see
their descriptions of mostly the same problem:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group...wsxp.general&[email protected]

There are a few other things mixed in there but that is mostly people
all describing pretty much what appears to be the same root problem
followed by my list of the things this had all claimed to be caused
by and which almost all appeared to not be the cause or fix it.

In my case, we installed SP2 on a clients set of computers, all of them
were Dell computers that were purchased with XP (no-SP1) at the same time,
about 1 year ago. All computers have the SAME parts/hardware/applications.
One of the systems, after installing SP2, would not allow searches, didn't
show the proper IE Help/About information (it was missing lots), and there
seemed to be no answer from anyone, even MS, about what caused it. I
searched for a week and started putting reports/fixes together from people
that had pieces of the problem and their fixes (and I've been doing this
since the 70's) and determined (through t/e) that scripting was the
problem - I installed the scripting package and everything started working
again.

We aren't that lucky to have identical machines. And IE doesn't seem
to be involved in this. But I can understand your method.

I can't explain it or even tell you how/why it worked for me. I've had two
serious SP2 problems on a just over 1000 machines that we manage for a
diverse group of clients. Of those, one needed a BIOS update, and the
other needed the scripting reinstalled. Since you say that you are having
problems with Explorer and searching (which was also a symptom that we
experienced, not just IE) I suggested the fix that worked for me. I
suspected that you had already done the basics, and this can't hurt.

Control panel,
Folder shortcuts,
Recycle bin,
Searching,
Windows Explorer
Not IE

Most folks report the same problem with at least a couple of these,
and some report it with every one of these

 

[Guest]

well thats great boohoo. I'm 100% behind bill and his team and am very
pleased with sp2. if you have had problems it probly cause your not taking
care of your systems and if you think you are your probly doing a half assed
job at it. thats all i got to say about that forest

 

[Jason Bowen]

Frankly you both are juvenille but I sure would like to figure out why a
fresh install of XP Pro with SP2 applied right after the install has
left me with a machine that can't seem to find device drivers for new
hardware that is plugged in to it. Trying to add a sidewinder usb
joystick and an iPod(firewire and usb) results in the hardware wizard
failing for both, saying it can't find the drivers. Any tips for that
or just more of the same? Sadly I've done the same exact install before
and everything worked just fine.

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Jason;
If you did the same before and everything worked fine then you apparently
have a bad install this time.
Since you just installed, the best solution may be to start over instead of
taking the time to find and fix the problem

 

[Jason Bowen]

That's assinine that re-installing would be the answer. Surely this can
be figured out without me having to get every cd out again and going
through this process once more. I don't want to be punished for going
against my instict.