Submit your suggestions to microsoft here
http://register.microsof...m/mswish/suggestion.asp

I believe many of us still not yet satisfy with current situations.

In my opinion Sp2 still not enough. why ?
The performance still not good enough.
It also did not fully safe from attack (especially from emails if user choose to open the attachements), it still need better protections. and Microsoft also need to add new service pack for Outlook XP and 2003 user.
Microsoft also still not yet improve XP SP2 for developer, so they can produce better software using XP SP2.
Need many improvements on IE.
Update still big sometimes, it need to be optimized more.
I am waiting for RC2.

i've been running the SP2 preview since it came out and haven't seen any performance degradation. an SP isn't necessarily supposed to increase performance, and i think MS was pretty clear with the intensions of this one. this is mostly a security update, albeit a very large and important one. as for email, what's MS supposed to do? when SR1 came out for 2000 the public screamed because of the attachment restrictions which couldn't be removed unless you were in an exchange environment. and it can't just block viruses because who's to say what a virus is? they're just programs that use common components for bad reasons. i legitimately use parts of SCRRUN, CDO and MAPI all of the time and actually need to send these off to other people, but these are also heavily targeted by virus writers. instead, MS has more tightly integrated APIs for AV vendors' products to scan things, which is great.

as for the rest of your comments (and please don't take this as any form of bashing) you weren't really specific in anything you said. you made some broad sweeping comments without citing any examples. if you could elaborate more i might tend to agree with you.

Well XP 2 is working out fine so far. I really enjoy the pop-up blocker. The only things that is bugging me is I am unable to download these updates they are talking about. I went to windows update and I get express or custom install. Which ever one i choose I get "Windows Update has encountered an error and cannot display the requested page." and the automatic updates do not seem to be working either. But other then that the service pack 2 is looking to be pretty cool

I had *exactly* this problem. It was annoyingly simple to fix in my case - I'd disabled the Automatic Updates and Background Intelligent Transfer System (BITS) services. Windows Update v4 doesn't need these services to be running to update your PC, but Windows Update v5 seems to require these to be at least set to Manual. Hope that helps!

you have to be either logged in as local admin or make sure win update service is running

My update worked until I ran Adaware and flushed a spyware entry in my registry from Microsoft. Also on video hangups I changed my Video Card from a ATI Radion to a G Force 4 and have had no problems.

Just a quick note - is anyone else having problems with XP SP2 RC1? I get random screen-blanking and system hangs which I just can't seem to reproduce in a consistent fashion. Some days, I'll run perfectly stable for 6+ hours, and some days it'll fall over within 10 minutes. The odd thing is, if I run games, or push the system hard in one or two apps, it stays stable as a rock. It's only when I've got 4-5 apps on the go and the machine's not too "busy" that it happens. I'm reluctant to report it to MS until I can reproduce it properly, especially as I also switch graphics card drivers on the same day. I've subsequently switched again, and it's still happening... but it's quite odd. The only consistent thing I can say about it is that it's never yet happened while I was in a 3d game, which makes me think it's unlikely to be the graphics card driver - maybe something in the GDI code? Does anyone have anything similar happening, or any thoughts about it? Cheers!

I have similar probelm of yours except mine is worse. I get to have BSOD on start up sometimes, and everytime I try to pin point the fault, Microsoft is unable to reproduce it, so they dropped my claim after awhile.

It is mostly related to kernel driver (drivers written by Microsoft), such as ntoskrnl.exe.

Well, I am one of the early alpha and beta tester for SP2, and at this point, I am disappointed just cuz MS tries to fix all securities before the deadline, and they couldn't a lot of bugs I have reported.. Oh well. I can kind imagine that more issues will come up as soon as SP2 Final is released to the public.

The popup blocker in IE is impressive, but I find some of the features still screwy. For example, if you click a hyperlink that leads to a site within "Trusted Site" zone, IE will ask you if you truly want to continue. On many of my machines, after I clicking "Ok", the page doesn't load. I reported it to MS, and they told me that problem should have been fixed by RC1, well..apparently not.

Microsoft jumpped straight from Beta 1 to one interim build and then straight to RC1. Based on one of the reknown jouranlist's opinion from CMP Network, SP2 RC1 should really just be Beta 2.

Last month, I downloaded Windows XP SP2 (the technical preview) and it's worked just fine for me.

Where can I download Windows XP Service Pack 2 RC1?

Thanks!

http://www.microsoft.com...inxppro/sp2preview.mspx

Thanks Alex! Appreciate the info.