I hate to be in the position of defending a MS product, but I've put SP2 on dozens of various computers in the last 3-4 months (after waiting a prudent 2 or so months for the dust to settle). Not had one yet to refuse to boot after applying the patch. I did have a laptop that gave some problems after the patch but it turned out to be hardware related, the patch seemed to "stir it up" some.
Add me to the lucky ones. The first 5 or so machines I installed XP SP2 upon worked as expected. I had some problems with VPN clients, but that was a known problem that the vendors were working on. However, the next two machines were disasters. I ended up with two unbootable systems. I had to boot from the cdrom, and reinstall XP. The repair option didn't work. After the reinstall, I found the problem. Both machines were full of spyware which broke the SP2 install. Since then, I've done about 20 SP2 installs and upgrades, and probably helped an equal number of users do it themselves. No problems as long as the viruses, worms, spyware, and weird utilities are removed, quarantined, or disabled. There was one other SP2 failure that I had to deal with. Norton System Works 2004 blew up during the install. Recovery was a nightmare because Norton's uninstall didn't work and left hundreds of entries all over the registry. When I finally hacked them out by hand using a registry editor, and manually trashed all of Norton's binaries, SP2 finally decided to install properly. Anyway, methinks it's safe and benificial to install SP2.
Microsoft sells (or used to sell) the MN-710, an 802.11g USB adapter. The box *clearly* states that this product supports WPA, yet after installation, its Configuration Utility baldly says that it does *not* support WPA.
How does Microsoft get away with such blatant false advertising?
This is from CNETs review of the product. Its always a good thing to research a product before purchasing. Never take the manufacturers word on products abilities.
"With WEP, WPA, and 802.1x support, the Microsoft MN-710 is equipped to join any encrypted wireless network. Unfortunately, the installation software doesn't load the Windows XP support patch for WPA, which means that you'll need to download and install it yourself to use the MN-710's enhanced security feature. Microsoft tells us no one is allowed to ship the patch, so that prevents the company from including the update with the MN-710. Fair enough, but the installation wizard never prompts you to download the patch from the Microsoft Web site, and the user manual lacks instructions for setting up WPA. This will leave some users in the dark about installing this security feature."
The computer on which this was installed had Windows XP SP1 with all updates (except the potentially dangerous SP2 itself). On this same computer I
*was* able to run WPA using an Airlink+ 802.11g USB adapter with its own configuration utility.The airlink utility has nothing to do with XP, so running WPA when not controlled by XP has nothing to do with loading the WPA patch for windows XP. Also, why do you think SP2 is "Potentially Dangerous"? Almost every network problem I have seen after the SP2 update can be fixed by doing some reconfiguration of network properties.
Do I understand you correctly:
- All other 802.11g manufacturers include their own configuration utility. Thus, if the box advertises WPA, the included utility does exactly that.
- Microsoft doesn't bother including *any* configuration utility with its MN-710. Instead, Microsoft assumes that the one built into Windows XP is "good enough."
- However, the one in Windows XP is definitely not good enough, because it doesn't support WPA, and hence doesn't fulfil the advertising on the MN-710 box. There is supposedly a secret patch to make XP support WPA, but Microsoft doesn't bother telling the customer that.
- This secret patch may or may not be included in SP2, but it is *not* loaded into SP1 even if the customer installs all available updates (except SP2 itself, which can cause computers not to boot).
If this is true, it still easily meets the definition of False Advertising.
No it does not meet the definition of False Advertising. They never state that it supports WPA out of box, that would be false advertising. The unit will support WPA with interation between you and the microsoft patch, period. Its not a secret, its just not stated. Period. A 30 second search on the net will tell you about it and how to find it.
You want to rant and rave about big bad microsoft be my guest, just make sure you have the facts straight and do the research, thats all.
Robert....
I agree. RNAV2003.EXE only vaporizes NAV 2001, 2002, and 2003. It does nothing for 2004 and 2005. To the best of my knowledge, there's no similar cleanup program for NAV 2004 and 2005. SYMCLEAN.EXE for vaporizing System Works isn't much better which doesn't touch 2003 or
2004. What really irks me is that NAV 2005 will detect some spyware, but doesn't do anything about removing it.On new pre-installed systems that arrive with NAV, I immediately uninstall it before it causes problems. One customer was complaining that it took too long to start the machine. If found that NAV 2003 had been removed, but Live Update and Live Reg were still installed. Live Update was downloading 6MBytes every time the machine was booted, but since NAV wasn't installed, it did nothing with the download. Current favorite anti-virus program is Grisoft AVG (free or paid) and TrendMicro.
Anyway back to SP2, I've had several "miraculous" fixes of wireless performance problems after installing SP2. Prior to SP2, the laptops in question were functioning but running slower wireless speeds than I would expect. Two were Intel 2200 802.11b/g MiniPCI cards. I have no clue why it should make a difference, but it did.
If I have a machine to do any work on, the first thing I do is run a battery of antivirus and antispyware on it. And Norton is one of the worst viruses to get rid of. Symantec even has a removal program written just to get rid of Norton when all other measures fail. They apparently don't see the irony between that and all their other malware removal tools.
Consider yourself lucky. I had two different computers refuse to boot after application of SP2. One of them was savable through Safe Mode and some sleuthing; the other was so badly damaged as to require a full reload of the operating system.
Read the Overview and System Requirements for the product:
That is precisely the definition of a secret. If a patch is not a regular Windows Update, and is not mentioned in product documentation, but yet is mysteriously necessary for the advertised operation of the product, that patch is most definitely a Secret Patch.
All that says is there is automatic support for WEP and there is support for WPA, which there is, but you have to search for it. Im not defending them man, im just saying do your homework or dont complain about not getting what you want.
Robert....
Does everyone realize that the above 'explanation' is *nonsensical*? Microsoft wrote the patch, and Microsoft sells the MN-710. How can Microsoft not 'allow' itself to include the patch with the product? And even if that somehow made sense, *why* doesn't Microsoft allow itself to ship the patch with the product?
if people know about it, maybe not you, but others and you can find the answer by doing a little research, then its not a secret.
Robert...
On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:50:31 GMT, Lawrence G. Mayka spoketh
No, even the configuration utilities that comes with other wireless cards rely on the underlying OS for WPA support. Only if you use an alternative (non-MS) wireless client software will WPA be supported without the WPA patch from MS. Since there is such a patch from MS, then WPA should work just fine.
The wireless client built into XP is good enough. It's very good, and it doesn't come with "additional features" that some other substitutes comes with.
Yes it does. I've been using the MS WLAN client for a very long time, and I've used WPA for over a year as well. You must have forgotten to install the appropriate patch for your system. It won't show up in Windows Update, so you'll need to look for it.
It's not secret, and it's not a ploy to "trick" you into installing SP2. There are very few problems with SP2, so I don't know why you're fretting over that...
No, it doesn't. Even my Linksys card which says it supports WPA did NOT support WPA until the WPA patch from MS was installed.
Lars M. Hansen
The US government restrictions on 128bit WEP encryption were lifted in
1997. WPA is exactly the same RC4 encryption as WEP but with a different method of key exchange. That was ruled as exportable by the US government in about 2002. Meanwhile, the 802.11i WPA-2 committee is working with the US government on obtaining approval for exporting WPA-2. I'm not sure of the status of AES encryption as I've been told that it's non-exportable. I suspect it has been approved as Cisco is exporting 3DES and AES enabled VPN systems without much difficulty. I do not believe that the MS WPA patch is restricted for import. There's also no restricted download notice on the web pages. |
The US govt has strict laws on the export of security technology. Its very possible that shipping the patch in the box would be illegal under US law. You may remember that once upon a time there was a 56 and 128-bit version of Internet Explorer for the same reason.
Same reason
Er, SP2 is not dangerous. Failing to install it is daft.
So what? The patch is for *XP*, not for the Airlink software.
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