Paul said:
If I create a restore point, install SP2, then wish to revert to the said
restore point - will it restore wholeheartedly or is System Restore overawed
by SP2?
SP2 can be uninstalled through "add/remove programs".
I don't know if it would be wise though, just like I don't think it's
wise to run XP _without_ SP2 and other security updates.
Not installing all updates the second they appear is literally begging
for things like this to happen:
I've got a collegue who's still using an old Win95 box, refusing to
upgrade it because he knows one of his applications will stop working.
He doesn't use that box to access the web normally, but last week he
did. Just once.
A simple Google search (or better, the visits to a few websites that
search turned up) left him with a "toolbar" that, after Sophos AV tried
to kill it for being a backdoor trojan, and after meeddling with it some
more because it was still there after Sophos reported it had deleted it,
installs itself again at every boot (i.e. each reboot adds one more
instance of the toolbar to explorer - and I mean windows explorer, not
internet explorer).
It took virtually no time for that toolbar to drag in a dozen viruses as
well: now every time he scans the machine Sophos finds and deletes new
malware, mostly keyloggers and more backdoors.
All of this happened behind a firewall we found was already
uncomfortably tight (MSDN subscriber downloads don't work through it
because of their use of non-standard HTTP extensions, for instance).
