Snow Computer Services // In The News

XP2 update gets passing marks from area IT pros

10/15/2004

Source: Boulder County Business Report

Author: Jeff Thomas

BOULDER. Two months after the release of Microsoft’s Service Package 2, local installation still was lagging but starting to surge forward as network and security experts are finding its installation is causing few problems.

While security experts usually want their clients immediately to install most of the myriad Microsoft operating system updates immediately, the size (80 megabytes for client boxes), scope and potential problems involved with the updates caused many to move cautiously forward.

In short, the Windows XP update, prompted by tremendous security concerns, was eyed almost with the same discretion as a new operating system, which it also almost approached in size.

“When SP2 came out I sent an e-mail, and I didn’t send it to all my clients at the same time, telling them about the upgrade. I didn’t want everyone going through the same problems at the same time,” said Dave Snow, president of Snow Computer Services, an IT consulting company based in Boulder, in late September. “Just a couple days ago, my staff and I decided to start cautiously giving it the thumbs up.”

Most of Snow’s security and networking clients had not automatically installed the update as it became available. And Microsoft wanted the distribution to occur slowly, to avoid clogging up Internet traffic.

Microsoft ended work on SP2 in early August and began distributing the package with CDs and downloads rather slowly. By the end of September several sources estimated that fewer than 10 million of 260 million Windows XP users had installed the security-born update.
Snow computer technicians first installed the update on their own XP boxes, including their home boxes, to test the system.

“We had a couple of clients who went ahead and installed SP2, so those became part of the test bed, too,” Snow said.

“Occasionally, there were hardware incompatibilities. We had one system where a motherboard incompatibility kept the system from booting up,” he said, noting they were able to fix the system and run the SP2 update. “What we found so far is there were (software) glitches maybe 20 percent of the time.”

That report was close to a mid-September survey by a Canadian firm that provides PC auditing and asset management tools, AssetMetrix Inc., which indicated that one in 10 corporate PCs would have some application adversely impacted by SP2. However, the study of more than 44,000 Windows XP computers from about 340 companies also found that companies with more limited numbers of XP machines Ñ say under 100 boxes Ñ were more likely to have software problems.

At Aardvark IT Solutions, an IT consulting firm in Broomfield, Systems Administrator Tommy Daw said his company was finding very few software problems. Both Aardvark and Snow recommend that companies using the update continue to test it by installing on one machine in each department, especially if that department is running legacy software, before going through a mass installation.

“It’s actually surprising that more people haven’t installed it already, because it is a Microsoft product,” said Daw, adding that almost all of his firm’s clients had been updated. “The product really deals more with security Ñ I just don’t see it messing up too many applications.”

National experts were thinking the 10 percent software glitch occurrence might be low. Several suggested as much as 20 percent of software, especially in smaller firms, will have some problem.

With major software products there have been fewer problems, although companies running Norton security products will need to update those products before installing SP2. Some experts also have found that spyware programs may cause havoc with the installation, so it is usually recommended that anti-spyware programs, such as Ad-Aware or Spybot, be updated and run before installation.

Microsoft is not extending its new security features farther down the Windows food chain by putting out a big security package for older operating systems like Windows 2000 or 98. While some experts see this as forcing the issue on upgrading to Windows XP, the near software monopoly has extended software patching for some of the older operating systems.

Snow said in only one instance, where an employee was connecting to a specialized Web service with automated imaging software, did he find that the SP2 package just would not run.

“Our one-time experience with backing up and (automatically) uninstalling (SP2) was painless enough that we’re not worried about uninstalling,” he said. “Ever since Windows 2000, my experience with Windows has been that it’s a really stable product right out of the chute.”

Snow said that the new XP firewall is more manageable and easily customized and should provide a big security advantage over the previous firewall. The new wireless application, he said, is another good new feature in SP2.

Still, “Most people are happy to wait, and a lot of people I’ve run into are either oblivious (of the new package) or a little hesitant,” he said. “It’s the minority of people who are champing at the bit to install this.”

Features:

Resources:

Make A Payment :