Service Pack 2

What's the latest consensus on this, install or stay away?

On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 10:05:14 -0600, "Prince Lee"
wrote:

What's the latest consensus on this, install or stay away?

I tried it but couldn't use Bluetooth, so reverted back. Overall you
are much better off getting a decent firewall (the SP2 one is absolute
crap), using Firefox for browsing and getting a better email/usenet
client than the useless OE. You will then have a far more secure and
useable system than you will achieve with SP2.
--
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
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That makes sense, what about performance hits? Also ATI is recommending it
be installed for thier new CAT drivers, should I go with that recommendation
or take heed to th horror stories of SP2 and stay away?




"Andrew" spamtrap@localhost. wrote in message
...
On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 10:05:14 -0600, "Prince Lee"
wrote:

What's the latest consensus on this, install or stay away?

I tried it but couldn't use Bluetooth, so reverted back. Overall you
are much better off getting a decent firewall (the SP2 one is absolute
crap), using Firefox for browsing and getting a better email/usenet
client than the useless OE. You will then have a far more secure and
useable system than you will achieve with SP2.
--
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 10:30:15 -0600, "Prince Lee"
wrote:

That makes sense, what about performance hits? Also ATI is recommending it
be installed for thier new CAT drivers, should I go with that recommendation
or take heed to th horror stories of SP2 and stay away?

For the few days I used it, I had no gaming issues with it. Which Cats
you use probably depends on which card you use. Everything since 4.4
for me has been a step backwards in performance and stability for my
9700 Pro.
--
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

I know what you mean, I still have the AIW8500DV, and it seems that ATI
manages to break something while fixing something else in each release. I'm
trying to see if this new set will fix a prob I've been having with an old
game that was working up until 4.0.100.1190.

Before that I was having troubles with vid capture and timeshift unstable. I
was hoping they fixed inadvertantly fixed everything with the new driver
set, and I wanna try them, but not if I have to put SP2 on my system.

At least I'd like to know if SP2 is functioning better than what I've heard,
and whethter its absolutely necessary for the new CAT's.




"Andrew" spamtrap@localhost. wrote in message
...
On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 10:30:15 -0600, "Prince Lee"
wrote:

That makes sense, what about performance hits? Also ATI is recommending
it
be installed for thier new CAT drivers, should I go with that
recommendation
or take heed to th horror stories of SP2 and stay away?

For the few days I used it, I had no gaming issues with it. Which Cats
you use probably depends on which card you use. Everything since 4.4
for me has been a step backwards in performance and stability for my
9700 Pro.
--
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

No horror stories here, SP2 + 9600 no problems. Haven't noticed any
performance decrease in any of the games I play. Haven't done any actual
benchmarking because I couldn't care less if my 3DM is 3500 instead of
3600 (or whatever). Real-life performance matters, and that has remained
the same, as far as the human eye can detect.

Ps. I do use Firefox+Thunderbird instead of IE/OE. Can't remove IE
though because it's still needed for WUpdate. That's the only thing I
use it for.

Prince Lee wrote:
That makes sense, what about performance hits? Also ATI is recommending it
be installed for thier new CAT drivers, should I go with that recommendation
or take heed to th horror stories of SP2 and stay away?




"Andrew" spamtrap@localhost. wrote in message
...

On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 10:05:14 -0600, "Prince Lee"
wrote:


What's the latest consensus on this, install or stay away?

I tried it but couldn't use Bluetooth, so reverted back. Overall you
are much better off getting a decent firewall (the SP2 one is absolute
crap), using Firefox for browsing and getting a better email/usenet
client than the useless OE. You will then have a far more secure and
useable system than you will achieve with SP2.
--
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

On 11/13/2004 8:50 AM Prince Lee brightened our day with:

I know what you mean, I still have the AIW8500DV, and it seems that ATI
manages to break something while fixing something else in each release. I'm
trying to see if this new set will fix a prob I've been having with an old
game that was working up until 4.0.100.1190.

Before that I was having troubles with vid capture and timeshift unstable. I
was hoping they fixed inadvertantly fixed everything with the new driver
set, and I wanna try them, but not if I have to put SP2 on my system.

At least I'd like to know if SP2 is functioning better than what I've heard,
and whethter its absolutely necessary for the new CAT's.



Whatever you've heard about SP2 probably comes from clueless fools who
don't know how to manage their systems properly. The main thing SP2
does is by default enable a more aggressive integrated software firewall
(along with the entire "Security Center"), for people without any
experience dealing with any kind of firewall (besides the previous
iteration of the Windows Internet Firewall which didn't do much) this
creates issues , this is what you hear about.
I have *zero* issues with SP2, I use ZoneAlarm, I turned the new thing
off as I'd done with the previous version.

The only thing that is necessary is having the latest .NET framework in
order to run the Catalyst Control Center. I'm not certain if that
requires SP2, I don't think it does.

I have SP2, the latest .NET framework, the 4.11 drivers +CCC and a 9800
Pro. Everything runs great.

--
Steve ¤»Inglo«¤
www.inglostadt.com

I have the AIW 8500DV as well and I'm using it with MMC9.02 on Windows XP
MCE 2005 which includes SP2 built in. I have absolutely zero issues with it
other than the fact the latest Catalyst drivers (it could be argued,
rightly) don't support the 8500DV under MCE 2005 - only standard XP.
Interestingly though, the OS has built in drivers for the 8500DV which work
fine outside of the Windows Media Centre. Thats not an SP2 issue though. If
its good enough for MSFT to include it in their Windows XP media now, then I
say go for it.

Paul

"Prince Lee" wrote in message
...
I know what you mean, I still have the AIW8500DV, and it seems that ATI
manages to break something while fixing something else in each release.
I'm
trying to see if this new set will fix a prob I've been having with an old
game that was working up until 4.0.100.1190.

Before that I was having troubles with vid capture and timeshift unstable.
I
was hoping they fixed inadvertantly fixed everything with the new driver
set, and I wanna try them, but not if I have to put SP2 on my system.

At least I'd like to know if SP2 is functioning better than what I've
heard,
and whethter its absolutely necessary for the new CAT's.




"Andrew" spamtrap@localhost. wrote in message
...
On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 10:30:15 -0600, "Prince Lee"
wrote:

That makes sense, what about performance hits? Also ATI is recommending
it
be installed for thier new CAT drivers, should I go with that
recommendation
or take heed to th horror stories of SP2 and stay away?

For the few days I used it, I had no gaming issues with it. Which Cats
you use probably depends on which card you use. Everything since 4.4
for me has been a step backwards in performance and stability for my
9700 Pro.
--
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

No problems here with SP2 running the latest drivers with control
panel not the control center S*** cause i didn't like the .net
framework stuff

On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 10:50:40 -0600, "Prince Lee"
wrote:

I know what you mean, I still have the AIW8500DV, and it seems that ATI
manages to break something while fixing something else in each release. I'm
trying to see if this new set will fix a prob I've been having with an old
game that was working up until 4.0.100.1190.

Before that I was having troubles with vid capture and timeshift unstable. I
was hoping they fixed inadvertantly fixed everything with the new driver
set, and I wanna try them, but not if I have to put SP2 on my system.

At least I'd like to know if SP2 is functioning better than what I've heard,
and whethter its absolutely necessary for the new CAT's.




"Andrew" spamtrap@localhost. wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 10:30:15 -0600, "Prince Lee"
wrote:

That makes sense, what about performance hits? Also ATI is recommending
it
be installed for thier new CAT drivers, should I go with that
recommendation
or take heed to th horror stories of SP2 and stay away?

For the few days I used it, I had no gaming issues with it. Which Cats
you use probably depends on which card you use. Everything since 4.4
for me has been a step backwards in performance and stability for my
9700 Pro.
--
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

Thanks for the responses, guess I'll go ahead and try it, I've already made
sure there is no spyware on my system, I know there aren't any viruses.

These are things I have on a pretty tight lockdown, as well as firewall
protection, but I was mostly concerned about program breakage, as MS said
that there would be some programs that would no longer work once SP2 is
installed.