Windows XP - SP2 | Articles | the bombsite

I’ve been watching the development of Service Pack 2 for some time now. Of course it should have been released by now but as is the norm with Microsoft it has been delayed and the current release date is July. Mind you I’d rather they got it right than have to download lots of patches soon after installing the service pack.

I had a quick look at the RC2 version of the pack a few weeks back and got the shock of my life. It was 230 MB! Now I have a paltry dial-up connection, not that I’m complaining, but a download of that magnitude is going to take about 15 hours. So what are all these megabytes for? Well it would appear that we are going to get a more or less completely new Windows which will contain all the little tweaks and security patches that we’ve all been waiting for. So why the new Windows? Because some of the changes are quite deeply embedded in the code which has meant an almost complete re-write.

The added security is very welcome but it will likely cause as many problems as it solves. The infamous XP firewall is getting beefed up. Great. The existing one is crap. Might as well not have one. Trouble is the new one will be switched on by default. Fine if you don’t use another firewall but a bummer if you do. If you use something else like Zone Alarm, Sygate or Tiny you’ll have to remember to switch the XP firewall OFF cuz they will most likely conflict. So am I suggesting you keep the one you have now in preference to the new, beefed up XP one? You bet. Have you noticed all those Windows applications that try to sneek onto the internet when they think your back is turned? If you use a firewall such as the ones I’ve mentioned above they will block these little beggers and tell you about them just in case you want to let them through. You can bet your bottom dollar that the XP firewall will let this Windows stuff through without question. After all, Microsoft would be lost without all that free information they get from millions of unprotected PCs every day.

A couple of other things they are doing I shall deal with together because the problems they will cause are internet related. The IE security has been improved with the addition of a pop-up blocker and an Active-X blocker. Again these are welcome additions but let’s think about web developers for a moment. Many of them, though not all thankfully, have been developing web sites for the 95% or so of surfers who use IE. At the moment IE doesn’t block pop-ups or Active-X applications so many of these sites use them ad nauseum. Now let us not forget that Flash is an Active-X application which IE is now going to be able to block along with all those pop-ups. I don’t have a problem with Flash other than some of the larger Flash files can take a while to load up with my dial-up connection. In any case I use Proxomitron which stops it loading but puts a link in it’s place which I can click on if I want to see it. If I don’t want to be bothered I can just carry on viewing the site having saved a bit of time by not having loaded the application.

As I write this many application developers are in urgent discussions with Microsoft to try and avoid the situation where IE users will not be able to view their sites in full. I gather that the current thinking is that you will be able to “allow” specific sites using a “white list” not unlike the “white lists” you can create in Mozilla/FireFox/Opera for cookies, animations and pop-ups etc. It’s quite funny really how much aggrevation a bit of extra security for IE is causing with web developers who obviously consider that a client’s internet security is less important than their precious designs. Ha ha. Bugger ‘em.