IT Employment

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Win2K, SP3 -- Your thoughts?

0 helpful
10 replies

by torque2k

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

I've installed SP3 on 3 different machines over the past three days... and what a mess! Here's what I've seen so far:

NOTE: 1 of the 3 PCs below had the SP3 installed from the full 123MB download, the others used Windows Update.

1) Fujitsu Lifebook notebook: fresh install of Win2K, then SP3 installed. Office 2000 SR1 installed, SP2 added next. User installed one simple program (heat exchange software) which barely touched the registry. Used with no problems for three days, then came into office, booted up, got as far as starting to show the login screen and the PC rebooted. Did this in Safe Mode, and last known good config was useless. Had to do a repair installation of 2K, and backed SP3 off. Works fine now... back to SP2.

2) Compaq Armada E500 notebook: my own machine, installed with Compaq's own preinstall, no service packs. I've applied SP2 + all hotfixes up to this point. Hundreds of programs installed, network sniffers, auditing software, Timbuktu Pro, Palm, Office 2K Pro, Visio, etc... never had a lick of problems with this machine. No new software installed for three or four weeks now. Installed SP3, and almost immediately Windows wouldn't do a full shutdown. Forced it one day, booted fine the next. Forced it again the next day, then it stopped working. Turns out my profile was crashing it. Booted into Administrator account, started backing up data from my profile to an external drive. Did a defrag, and it kept locking up. Now it won't boot into Admin account! Running Norton AV Corp 7.6, with 8/14/2002 defs auto-installed via LiveUpdate...

3) generic tower AMD PC: Install of Win2K with SP2, running fine for 6 months. Applied SP3, and within two days, same exact problem as #1 above!

...

So, I'm totally off SP3. I'm interested in seeing how others are fairing with this service pack. Is it just my really bad luck, or is Microsoft going to have to pull this release?

10 replies

by djent

The uside to this is, now that your computers are dead, MS can't peek and poke your computers as you aggreed in the clickwrap EULA. Was this the "gold BETA" version? I have learned that the "fools rush in" phrase is germain to MS products, caution is golden.

by torque2k

I thought ALL M$ products are "gold BETA"... I've been a beta-tester for Micro$oft for literally DECADES, and pay for it every time (figuratively and literally). :)

No, this was "final" product from their Update site. The really good news from all of this is that 1) I'm done testing this SP, and I usually work with them for a couple months before I execute the installations... WOO-HOO!, and 2) my notebook is now running FAST, as there are no programs installed.

The bad news? The boss wants me to install Office XP, now that SP2 for THAT is coming out... ;P

by djent

You are right! It took SP6a on NT4 with some hot fixes to fix most of the problems. If MS did it right they couldnt sell new versions. Its not a tech issue, its a money issue.

by lordinfidel

A good rule of thumb is to wait a good month or two before installing Service Packs.

And if you want to test it, do it on a machine that is not critical and watch for what happens.

For me, I am still waiting on the side lines for now to see how many machines are reported broken with sp3. I'm also not thrilled with the new windows update "feature". It just does not sit well with me in regards to critical production servers that should never be downloading anything.

by dave4e2open

In the last EWeek hardcopy issue, they mentioned that you should do a series of hard drive clean-up steps prior to installing SP3.

It also mentions an option to turn off the auto-download/update and auto reboot to instead notify you before anything is automatically executed.

I have already installed a few of the patches that are within SP3. I'll wait until the dust settles.

by torque2k

No, I didn't bother to clean up anything that I've not done before. I did a defrag, emptied web caches, and did an ERD (which didn't help at all)and that's about it. I still run IE 5.5 SP2, and all patches prior to SP3 were installed on my own machine which died...

I don't feel that I should have to do anything special, if Micro$oft doesn't tell me I should. This is a Service Pack, for cripe's sake, not a DIS-Service Pack. They're supposed to FIX bugs, not add to them.

I will definitely learn from this, and wait for the NEXT service pack before installing this one. I just irks me that Micro$oft has fallen to this terrible level of service. :(

by tark

I have read the threads in this conversation with interest. I've installed sp3 on four systems at work, two of them being brand new Compaq DL320 rack servers and two of them being old AMD K6/2 300 boxes. I've kept them up-to-date with hot fixes and whatnot, and installed sp3 on them last week. So far I've not had any problems with it.

As for the auto update function, I've turned that off. I don't like my systems going out on their own and grabbing stuff. I like to know when software is added to my servers.

by null_connection

We've finished installing SP3 on 6 of 12 W2K servers and about a dozen W2K Pro boxes. So far, all have come off without a hitch. I do admit to having put off the SP on the most complex boxes.

We do all the normal stuff (full backup, ERD updates, shut down virus scanning and non-essential svcs.) but nothing else special.

by cavedweller

I am setting up a new deployment of Win 2000 and am still running offline. My Dell came with server SP-2. Once I had it up and running I installed a couple of clients. Everything seemed to be working well while I tested software deployment, policies and such. So I installed SP-3. The clients could no longer browse the network although the server could browse the clients. My first thought was that I'd been experimenting too much and accidentally whacked something. I re-installed Win 2000 server from scratch using the Dell server assistant disk and the Microsoft checklist, then re-installed the clients too. Again, everything was running well. I installed SP-3 and got the same problem, the clients couldn't browse the network. I uninstalled SP-3 from the clients and now they work normally.

Conclusion: Stay away from SP-3.

by bnbaldwin_53

I suffered through a fresh install of w2k on a Gateway E-3000 with a 20GB drive using EZ-BIOS. W2k will only run in FAT32 which I finally accepted. Ran like a top until I installed SP3. Now it gives a stop error on boot indicative of a bad MBR. Eventhough Microsft says nothing in the release notes I'm afraid that the updated files were written for NTFS and now I'm looking at a total re-install. Thanks Bill! #$@&*!!!

This discussion is closed to new replies.