As a person charged with maintaining a few small networks on the Gulf Coast, I have noticed weird behavior out of otherwise well established programs on machines running Win Xp with SP2. I recently had a senario where Quick Books Pro 2005 Multi User would not open when normal "map network drive" procedures were used. We spent 349.00 plus 3 days on this issue with QB tech support. The final workaround-move the company file to the shared(all users) folder.
This seems to be very unsecure, since all the machines can access the shared folder, rather than the company file being right out there in plain site if normal database sharing and multiaccess protocols were observed, the data file would be secure in the server's programs folder and would only be accessible for practical purposes to QB users on the network.
Intuit put a lot of resources and time as did we into solving this predicament. However the cure is really a bandaid on a fracture. I really believe we are much more exposed to hack attempts and data theft because of the company file location.
Intuit was very interested in our problems, to the point in assigning a customer advocate to our issue.
I really and completely believe QB Pro 2005 would have run and networked as per normal mapped drive policies Intuit instructs be used in a PRE SP2 machine.
Other programs tend, such as Nero Burning Rom, tended to get unstable after SP1 was installed.
My best suggestion is contact your sw. vendor support channel and ask if patches/upgrades or such are available for their products before SP2 is installed/
Lots of SW companies are actually stating on their websites and/or box and disk suitable for Win XP SP2.
