Beyond these visible changes, Service Pack 2 folds in numerous alterations to the inner plumbing of Windows. Such unneeded features as the Messenger Service, which spammers exploited to broadcast official-looking pop-up ads, are now shut off, and others are exposed only to a local network. With SP2's firewall shut off, however, I did find that it left two network ports open for no apparent reason.
People running computers equipped with 64-bit processors get extra protection against "buffer overflow" errors, a common tactic used to sneak hostile programs onto a computer. Service Pack 2 can tell these chips to enforce "no execute" rules that prevent a program from running in a block of memory that isn't specifically reserved for use by programs.
_____Live Discussion_____
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Transcript: Rob discussed cybersecurity issues
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_____How to Be Safe Online_____
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Take Care to Guard Your Windows (The Washington Post, Aug 15, 2004)
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Skepticism Is the Message for E-Mail (The Washington Post, Aug 15, 2004)
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When to Leave What Closed (The Washington Post, Aug 15, 2004)
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Geek Speak (The Washington Post, Aug 15, 2004)
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Computer Users Need a Good Backup Plan (The Washington Post, Aug 15, 2004)
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| | | | ___Personal Tech E-letter___ Washington Post personal technology columnist Rob Pegoraro answers reader e-mail and expands on themes he touches on in his weekly newspaper column. The e-mail version of this weekly feature includes links to the latest gadget and software reviews.
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Despite all the surgery Service Pack 2 conducts in the guts of Windows, all four of my installations worked. A Dell desktop needed 30 minutes; two others took closer to an hour, and an older IBM desktop needed two hours, counting the time needed to start from scratch after a first install was halted by a mysterious reboot. The only program I found that did not function afterward was a specialized networking utility.
Many of SP2's Internet features, such as its control over downloads and attachments, don't work in other Web and mail programs, but developers of those can add support for them.
Service Pack 2 still can't save gullible users from themselves, though. And since it continues to grant people "administrator" access to a computer, any one mistake can take down the entire machine.
This leaves Windows XP at a continued disadvantage compared with such competitors as Linux or Mac OS X. (Programmers call the idea of giving a user no more power than needed for the job "the principle of least privilege"; the same logic comes into play every time a parent gives a kid a $20 bill, not $50, before sending him out to pick up a pizza for dinner.)
Service Pack 2 is a free update, but it's not easy to get -- yet. A 266-megabyte download is available at Microsoft's site (go.microsoft.com/?LinkID=806688), while users with automatic updates enabled will have a smaller version sent to their PCs over the coming weeks. Around the end of the month, SP2 will be available on CD-ROM; to Microsoft's credit, it will ship these CDs at no charge.
Computer manufacturers should be able to add this update to their systems within a month or so, Microsoft says. I would like to suggest that any firm that isn't pre-installing SP2 by November has no business selling home computers at all.
Individual Windows users bear the same responsibility: If you run XP, you need to install SP2. Period. Loading a system update this big is never risk-free, but the far bigger risk is to keep stumbling along with an unpatched copy of Windows XP. Ask a computer-savvy friend to install it if you must. But don't wait for the viruses and worms to stop coming. They won't.
Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at rob@twp.com.
