I just recently had to restore my whole system because of a data read error that developed on my boot drive. After reinstalling WinXP SP1 I find that I'm continuously prompted to download the SP2 upgrade.

I've just been ignoring the notification for now because I've had a few other fires to contend with due to the MP changes :) I haven't heard anything good about this service pack upgrade and I thought I'd ask before I disable auto upgrade notifications if anyone here has installed SP2 with no problems? I'm especially interested in how it effects broadband internet connections and any Poser related issues.

Has anyone here had a good experience with this upgrade or is it as bad as it's been reported to be?

Thanks :)
Rick

I installed it on a broadband connection. After initial settings (like firewall and such) never a problem and Poser has run fine since. - Noel

I have the sp2 upgrade with win xp pro and never had a problem...I believe the problems are mostly in certain programs that are listed on the MS site. For me everything including poser 4 & 5 are running just fine... TMP

Thanks for the help :) spiritual, did you have to disable the default firewall that SP2 installs? I have it disabled now with SP1 because I use Zone Alarm and I was wondering if it overides my turning it off?

If I remember right it did turn it back on, but it was easy to disable. You'll go through about a day of it popping up little warning messages but you can permantly turn them off when they show up (e.g. your antivirus up to date? Sure you want firewall off? etc) But haven't had an issue since I upgraded. - Noel

Using it, no problems whatsoever.

Thanks Noel, the reason I mention it is because one of the most frequent complaints I heard was that once people installed SP2 they had firewall issues and couldn't connect to the internet until they sorted it out :)

I finally took the plunge and installed SP2, but I downloaded it locally and installed that way, partly so I have a local copy, and partly because I've heard from many sources that doing it via the Windows Update can cause problems. I'm happy to say I haven't had any problems with it, once I disabled the built-in firewalling (I have a third-party firewall I prefer). bonni

just one small concern, which only happens with clean install and updating. install anti-virus before running windows update at all. a friend had a problem with a virus hitting his comp every time he went to update from a clean install, until he denied any inet connection until after installing anti-virus. but as for sp2, never a problem, other than the danged security center pop-ups cause of turning off windows firewall. and as spiritual pointed out, after a day or two even that stops.

I too installed SP2, and I did so from the Windows Update thingie. Mostly Poser runs OK but I have had some strange quirks that I haven't seem before - vanishing cursor (previously only encountered while using MetaForms) and sometimes clicking a P5 material file doesn't have any effect until I restart Poser. Those CAN be coincidental of course. As a whole I'm satisfied with SP2, I like the new pictures-in-emails blocker a LOT. My Max has been acting strange though, but again I don't KNOW if it's related to SP2.

"My Max has been acting strange though, but again I don't KNOW if it's related to SP2." well it had no effect on my max.

Good to know. I MAY Have hit a setting by mistake. The screen won't properly update anymore. It's like the OpenGL is screwed. Perhaps I should try a reinstall of Max then. Can't harm :o)

I followed a similar routue following a hardware problem - reinstalled Windows XP Pro and all software - including Poser 4 and 5. Then took the plunge and installed XP SP2 and to my surprise (after reading all the negative stuff) all my software worked ok including broadband access to the internet. The only follow up work was to adjust a few settings in the new Security Centre so the the windows firewall was turned off in favour of my own. Anyway, if you did have problems then I understand you can reverse the installation of SP2 anyway.

I got a new disk and installed XP Pro and SP2 on it, and then installed programs. Poser5 plus the latest SR work pretty fine. There's still that strange bug that causes Poser to open Pose settings after I exit Material room, but otherwise it works fine. Ernyoka, do you have an nVidia card? My GeForce 2 Ti has some similar problems after I installed the original manufacturer's driver. It appears there are some issues. But I don't dare install the latest nVidia driver. And Rick, yes, disable the Windows Firewall immediately and install Zone Alarm.

Yeah it IS an nvidia card. Glad I'm not just imaginig things then. Latest drivers, huh? Hmm I've never had the need YET to install new drivers for my video card. But perhaps now's the time. Why wouldn't you install the new ones? As I said I've never done that before, so.. what's to worry about?

Zone Alarm should work with the Security Centre anyway, as far as I know (some earlier builds of ZA had problems, but as long as you are reasonably up-to-date you should be fine). My firewall (Sygate) isn't currently seen by the Security centre, so I've told it to mind its own business until Sygate is updated and all seems well. Running the current (July) nVidia drivers with an FX5200 with no problems, too (but I don't have Max).

as for the popups wouldn't killing the alerter service take care of this? I usually do that after a reformat among other services, but have been too busy since reformatting last week

Havn't killed the Xp firewall yet either but no connection probs. and I'm also behind a hardware firewall. I don't have Poser or really anything major back on this comp yet, but so far no probs with SP2 whatever that's worth.

Message edited on: 11/19/2004 08:24

Did it from the Windows Update on 2 machines, no problems whatsoever.

No problems to speak of since installing SP2.Poser 5 runs ok without any problem.

I have XP Pro at home at an work and have installed SP2 on both of them and they both work fine. Poser runs great especially since I upgraded to 1 gigabyte of memory.

I have XP Pro, have installed SP2 - downloaded the network version of SP2 rather than use windows update - worked fine - security center detected I was running Zonealarm and left the Microsoft firewall disabled. Have had no probs running Poser 5.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. I have a lot more confidence now in installing SP2. I'm going to download the network install then and give it a go :)

"There's still that strange bug that causes Poser to open Pose settings after I exit Material room, but otherwise it works fine." Erlik..the same thing is with me when I exit the Material room and I don't have SP2 installed. It's no biggy as at least my Poser 5 is working just fine anyways.

I haven't installed SP2, but I've read in other forums that it caused some problems with certain video cards and certain Epson printers and scanners. But I understand Epson has updated their drivers to fix that.

This thread finally gave the the confidence to go ahead and install XP SP2. Ugh ... so very typical of Microsoft. It ruined my internet connectivity not by virtue of security settings (which are easily managed anyway,) but by uninstalling my Ethernet NIC! Just amazing. Obviously I got it figured out and fixed, but that sort of thing would have seriously frustrated someone who doesn't understand such things ... which would be most Windows users. (Not condescending, it's just a fact.) Anyway, I did a couple of super-quickie renders in Poser and haven't noticed any new functionality issues, but frankly, I can't really see how SP2 would affect Poser per se.

xonocostle, you never know with Microsoft. :-) for instance, since they installed the digital copyright protection into Media Player 10, I wouldn't be surprised if it went and asked you whether all the scenes you created were yours. ;-)

Yeah, ardiva, it's an old bug which they haven't corrected yet. True, not a biggy, but irritating. It's the little things that make you go Aaargh. :-)

And some more display problems, both in Poser and elsewhere:

For instance, I switch from one category of figures to another, or from figures to Poses or to props or whatever. The hourglass appears and then disappears only when I pass the mouse over the scene window. Almost the same thing happens in Bryce.

Message edited on: 11/19/2004 16:31

I installed SP2 from Windows Update on a clean install of XP Home. Its a broadband connection. The only problem that seems to have come from SP2 is that I seem to get corrupt downloads once in a while. I also installed it on an old installation of XP from the SP2 CD that FINALLY came in the mail. This one is on a wireless network. No probs on this machine. On both machines I disabled Windows Firewall and the Security Center. I aslo killed the Info Bar in IE. No problems on either machine except the corrupt downloads on the one computer...