Does Service Pack 2 slow you down?

2

Comments

  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    Also, and this is weird, I got a smoother and slightly faster XP SP2 performance after:

    2 Restarts, not just one (after first restart it was visibly SLOWER than SP1, after second it was about the same visibly and I did not bother benching, simply ran 4 programs like WordPerfect, Corel Graphics Suite, and Peachtree, and Paint Shop Pro all at once, and had three of them opening large files and Peachtree Complete Accounting doing a data file backup, to see how it bogged... After second restart and a major defrag it did NOT bog, before second restart it bogged more than after second restart, and after defragging (After SECOND RESTART) it went a bit faster yet) . Then defragging the HD, given that about 250 MB (SP2 archive size rounded to nearest ten MB) of files got written if you accepted all the defaults for the SP2 install.
  • edited October 2004
    You did no disk marks or boot times, you did not check show processes by all user when comparing startup processes.
  • edited October 2004
    What about benchmarks on a 1GHz to 2GHz machine like most of us have?
  • edited October 2004
    I personnaly don't understand what all the guest users are getting all excited about. I didn't find anything wrong with MM's conclutions and I agree that he never said not to install it. He simply had a question and did some research on it and came up with his own conclutions based on what he found. Other people will find different conclutions based on their experiments cause they will probably do things a little different. Welcome to the world of Sceince!

    As for my view on SP2 -- and keep in mind that this is my OPINION so flame me all you want, you won't change my mind -- I won't be putting it on anytime soon. I feel my system runs fine without it. I think that some firewall is better than none, but I don't see what good upgrading is going to do when it's integrated with IE which we can all see is full of security holes - else why would they be making all these "critical updates". Like any software, someone is going to exploit it and any fixes they come up with. To the average user, great - download the crap out of SP2. With as may people as there are who dislike windows, you can be sure you're going to need all the help you can get to protect yourself. As for myself, I'll go for a separate piece of hardware to do the blocking for my system and do without the extra problems I might get from SP2 (at least until I absolutly have to).
  • edited October 2004
    This is guest who wrote comment on first page about msiexec.exe and windows update exe file running...

    Mediaman, is it possible you may have made a slight mistake in assuming that there were four new processes running and that your computer was indeed installing some form of update, or software?

    You commented that you took a screenshot immediately after the system booted, which sidesteps my issue that you made a sensationalist comment.
  • edited October 2004
    @Dexter
    im sorry it wasn't my intention to offend anyone and im not this unregistered who said MediaMan is a Kid or anything i don't do such things im just schoked and i think you belive to much in [DEP] only on the Software side it's bad the CPU has to support it to be secure, i see DEP in SP2 as useless as anything else you allready mentioned like the popup blocking thing in the ie core wich the idear was stolen from Firefox the useless Security Center the so called Firewall and many useless Services that running in the Background that you never gonna use especialy as a Gamer. But nevertheless Sp2 is not slower then Sp1 when correctly tweaked but still more secure it took some time before the last patches for Sp1 where released on this months patchday Sp2 was allready fixed by that time and belive me the russians and chinese are fast in finding security problems in Windows. And also i don't think you can be happy to be on W2S with such an Article i think it's the other way arround you should be worried. I just feared Gamers could take this serious and decide to stay with Sp1 wich wouldn't be good in time ahead circumstances as patches will still be sooner released for Sp2 then for Sp1 that's a fact and should be taken into consideration. I remember about the Blaster disaster the russians found the whole the chinese exploited it and hell was lose, me was 1 day fixed before the whole thing broke lose and i had the exploit in that time myself so now you can make your mind up what for a user i'am. And no im not a Script Kiddie under Windows im useing Kerio Winroute Firewall and as Virus Scanner Kaspersky. As you see im useing products from Russia and Croatia (Europe) i never would use Norton or Symantec Products as they weak and under US regulations. But this is to much info for the Average user the Key Point was Gamers shouldn't only fell their decissions on the Speed factor of SP2 even if it is slower then Sp1 wich it is absolutely not (correctly configured) this would make no diference and the decission should be Pro Sp2. i hope it is clear now what i wanted to say in short words "You have to be ahead of the Enemy" the same as in Games.

    Cheers and please leave MediaMan alone insulting is bad behaveiour
    sincerly yours CruNcher :)

    :i will not post here anymore just to be sure everyone who tries to impersonate me is a faked me:
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited October 2004
    :i will not post here anymore just to be sure everyone who tries to impersonate me is a faked me:

    That's not necessary. Why not register? :)
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited October 2004
    Mediaman, is it possible you may have made a slight mistake in assuming that there were four new processes running and that your computer was indeed installing some form of update, or software?

    It does indeed seem odd and I don't mind your observations. That's just the way it appeared on the system after SP2 was installed and the PC was rebooted.

    To the unregistered guest 2 posts up.

    You are welcome to keep posting and please do. :) Your comments here are welcome. I have been called many other names before...some have been very colorful metaphors.

    I try to put my articles on a level of a typical user. Most users do not go to the extent of slipstreaming or streamlining (tweaking) an OS that we do. I simply installed the OS, service packs and updates and noted my observations.

    The tests could have been endless but Microsoft appears to have left me off the payroll. I had to stop somewhere. :)

    The article encourages readers to think.

    It encourages readers to examine their own system, ask questions and apply possible solutions then determine if those solutions suit their needs.

    In all of these comments about this article there is much to learn for the reader. Many faithfully believe that Symantec or Mcafee are the best and you've raised interesting comments about Kerio and Kaspersky. Users are again reminded that an OS can be adjusted to increase performance...especially for gaming. There is this not often used term DEP that some may be questioning.

    In all of this...questioning is good. Debate and discussion leads to improvement.

    Your comments are welcome here.
  • edited October 2004
    I worked in the IT industry and we work with this sort of stuff all the time. We have done extensive tests and so forth on sp2 and I have done on my home PC which i use for games etc...1% difference here and there is nothing, even in benchmarking. In normal windows sp2 hasn't slowed down any pc's I have worked on and installed.
  • edited October 2004
    31684 marks in 3dmark2k3 on ath64 3800+ and 9800 pro ???? NO WAY !
    I wonder in what resolution was tested... but anyway.. 31000+ in that test seems to be a SF or a huge mistake.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited October 2004
    Uhh look again. Its not 2001 either because he never tested for it.

    Edit: I hope next time you read the whole damn article and NOT skip to the end. The 31k is adding up each test. If you read the article you would have know that.

    3dmark03.gif
  • edited October 2004
    MediaMan,
    I am curious, when you set the memory static to 1024, did you set the start point at the end of the physical memory?
  • edited October 2004
    what a waste of time....
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited October 2004
    Aoen,

    The page file was set to a min and max of 1024 and kept on C:. No other adjustment or settings were made to memory configuration. Timings are irrelevant to the article as BIOS settings were the same between both SP1 and SP2 tests.

    Thanks for your comment.


    To the unregistered guest following Aoen's comment.

    Why was it a waste of time. Many users have reported their own problems they believe are attributable to the installation of SP2. I am not saying that SP2 is not to be installed but I hope the article shows those users, though mostly by game benchmarks, that the difference in speed of SP1 vs. SP2, on average, is negligable.

    This article does not make comment to the importance of SP2.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    I am amused by the volume of armchair quarterbacks syndication summons.
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited October 2004
    Thrax,

    I have yet to unleash you upon them. I cringe at the thought of someone going head to head with you. I have visions of you jumping from the top ropes and the announcer yelling "Thrax let's loose with a decompiler! Oh my god that's got to hurt."

    :D
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    ;D

    We'll see what happens when my DVD2XViD article goes live. Should be interesting.
  • edited October 2004
    An importand point that was missed is that SP2 has some security enhancements under the hood that is not "new features" such as the code review that have been done and also the buffer check that was put into place. "Old" (released pre SP2) software can thus be at odds because of this and new software can also take this into consideration. That the results give such a no difference is a clear signal for everyone, including hardcore gamers, to install SP2. Hardcore gamers are not the best at securing their systems (just go to any LAN-party that host a serious competition and you'll see). THere have already been discovered bugs in SP1 that did not affect SP2 due to the new enhancments. If that doesn't tell you anything I don't know what will.
  • edited October 2004
    thanks for the article, never heard of this site before. But what you have stated about the 2-3% I have found true on my wifes machine. Mine however got a clean install, then up to SP2...

    Anywho, thanks for doing the work, I know it took some time. People are to eager to criticize these days...

    :)
  • edited October 2004
    Hello all,
    another guest from Sweden (no not a site ...... ;-) ...... a country).

    I was running XP-PRO-RTM with SP1a on top of it, fully updated. When I installed SP2 on top of that, I ended up with the same processes running as before. That can be deceptive since quite a few processes hide behind one/any of the instances of svchost.exe. Bring up the cmd window, type TASKLIST /SVC and You will find all processes that are running. I didn't think of comparing before and after installing SP2 but I guess there are differences.

    My system is rather "low-end", Athlon Thunderbird 1GHz/266MHz, 512MB PC133 and I noticed that startup time was increased from 60~65 seconds to 65~70 seconds (until userinit.exe disappeared from taskmanager).

    Since then, I have installed my old XP-PRO-RTM with SP2 slipstreamed and I notice no difference but then, I have only timed startups, no benchmarking. The feel of the system with SP2 slipstreamed compared to the prior system, with two SP's on top, is the same. I recommend slipstreaming anyway since the resulting installation is much slimmer. Some 0.5 GB at least, in uninstall folders, are avoided.
  • ArcticBirdmanArcticBirdman Cambridge Bay, NU
    edited October 2004
    I've installed on my Thinkpad A31p(no problems) and one of my main computers(ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe) which it promptly took out both onboard NIC's. Also, not sure, but I think it also seems to load up my CPU to 100% whenever I am using external USB 2.0 devices. During your tests, did you try using external devices to see if slowdowns occurred. Unlike SP1, SP@ does uninstall very nicely, though I expect Microsoft will eventually force us to update whether we like it or not.
  • SimGuySimGuy Ottawa, Canada
    edited October 2004
    Caught the link from the [H] yesterday. Props on a very informative article MediaMan.

    :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    MediaMan wrote:
    Aoen,

    The page file was set to a min and max of 1024 and kept on C:. No other adjustment or settings were made to memory configuration. Timings are irrelevant to the article as BIOS settings were the same between both SP1 and SP2 tests.

    Thanks for your comment.


    To the unregistered guest following Aoen's comment.

    Why was it a waste of time. Many users have reported their own problems they believe are attributable to the installation of SP2. I am not saying that SP2 is not to be installed but I hope the article shows those users, though mostly by game benchmarks, that the difference in speed of SP1 vs. SP2, on average, is negligable.

    This article does not make comment to the importance of SP2.

    You are more likely to have slowdowns due to virals or malware present during install and before it, and non- WHQL drivers or very old drivers that XP SP2 is stricter about than SP1, than you are to have a lot of security-fix-only slowdowns. SP2 can slow things down to what it perceives as the effectiveness of the box and safest way to run the box as it stands. Using non- WHQL drivers(intended for XP, not just 2000) or older drivers and updating to SP2, since SP2 is tighter on what privs processes can have, can lead to odd issues. The most sensitive things are monitor and chipset and video adapter, then mouse an dkeyboard and USB and firewire device drivers, then scanner and optical I\O like cameras (TWIN devices), then (last) printer drivers. One of the things XP SP2 will crack down on is vxd's that are not really legal to XP SP2 standards-- in fact the install might hang if video non-WHQL drivers are present, or bog after install if they are. Fix then, can be as simple as new video drivers or chipset AGP drivers, or a complete reload with a slipstreamed SP2 install whihc some people like. But, a successful and complete SP2 install tends to be so close to SP1 in performance if you do not have lots of old software or drivers running and little to no malware or virals present(or hardware faults present also), that for some folks performance change is a non-issue.


    Take a look at the nots on Microsoft's SP2 support site areas, essentially wirtten as "thou shalts." You shall remove malware and virals before installing SP2 (if you don't, you might get to reload windows totally). You shall have, as much as possible, XP SP2 ready drivers (not many of those out yet, really, but WHQL drivers for SP1a are next-best). You shall NOT have major unsolved hardware issues, a STOP Error on first reboot after install of SP2 will bork the install big time, the registry never gets settled in to SP2 settings right. Instead, SP1 entries in registry are accessing SP2 components, after a stop error you recover from, unless you can successfully load SP2 completely AFTER or DURING (slipstream) the recovery.
  • edited October 2004
    Hey, please bear in mind that the test rig is using AMD Athlon 64 which comes with a NX bit built into the hardware. If SP2 detected no NX function in hardware, it will emulate in software. From there, I believe it will have big difference between SP1 and SP2 will be greater. Try to re-run the benchmark on a P4 rig or AMD rig with no NX bit.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    SP2 does not emulate the NX function in software. That's misinformation.
  • edited October 2004
    Service pack 2 has not slowed my computer down in any way. I say that SP2 is slower on weaker computers. SP2 just needs a bit more processing power that SP1.
  • edited October 2004
    I hate SP2! Simply because of that DEP. I uninstalled it once and for all and now back to SP1. I've tried to disable DEP, editing boot ini but to know avail. It has no effect, the small module keeps poping up and asking me "Run as.." S**t!! I'm the owner of this computer! Why do that program asking me who should run a certain application. To hell with that Data Execution Prevention!
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    I hate SP2! Simply because of that DEP. I uninstalled it once and for all and now back to SP1. I've tried to disable DEP, editing boot ini but to know avail. It has no effect, the small module keeps poping up and asking me "Run as.." S**t!! I'm the owner of this computer! Why do that program asking me who should run a certain application. To hell with that Data Execution Prevention!
    Run as... means you do not have elevated privileges (you are not an admin on that PC).

    Check your user account to confirm you are an administrator, not a standard user.
  • edited October 2004
    I install SP 2,thinking it was a good thing to have the added security from a firewall which seemed to work well.But I lost internal network pluss 20 GBs of data,which I was due to backup.
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