Yes, tonight I put WinXP SP2 on my trusty tablet, the honorable Toshiba Portege M200 (all rise, says the bailiff). And … nothing happened. Nothing untoward, that is. The custom download was about 75 MB, nearly 200MB less than the everything download that’s been available online for a week or so. The download was verified, then installed, all automatically. It was also nice to see a system restore point set automatically. The machine rebooted (after it asked politely and I said “sure”), and when it came up again, I was asked if I wanted to set automatic update to “on.” “Sure,” I replied. Then the boot finishes and voila, mirabile dictu, Windows Security Center launches. It tells me that autoupdate is on but Windows can’t tell if my virus definitions are up to date. I gave it permission to stop monitoring: “I’ll do that myself, thanks.” I note that the firewall is on. I exit Security Center and go about my business.
Nothing is wrong.
If there’s another shoe, it’s either a slipper and I couldn’t hear it fall, or else it’s taking a long, long time to thump on the floor.
Emboldened, I’ll probably go ahead with the update on my prime machine at school tomorrow. Watch me jinx that one, too. 😉
The shoe is slipper for those who have a healthy machine going into the update. Where I have noticed the Doc Martin falling is on computers with previous ailments. If a PC is already infected with a virus or even certain spyware before the update, applying XP SP2 can result in a “blue screen of death” and little chance of rebooting again. A note to all: please make sure you are in good PC helath before administering this treatment, or you may find that the cure is worse than the disease.