Service Pack 2

Also known as SP2. A software update for the Microsoft Windows XP operating system. A pitiful attempt by Microsoft to control the amount of circulating threats to their systems with basic, buggy applications. Utilizing their Windows Update service, the software is automatically downloaded and installed - an attempt to control the security market. It contains basic software add-ons for their applications. These add-ons are very annoying, especially for the experienced computer users who already have better applications, but that are not recognized as proper programs as they are not authorized or owned by Microsoft. Computers users with little experience are given a false sense of well being, and generally are taken advantage of. SP2 contains a number of generally useless add-ons for their applications which although seem as if they will do your computer good, will affect perfectly working third party updates - such as registry updates or drivers. Once installed, SP2 will overwrite these, thus creating previously prevented problems. SP2's threat preventing applications work alongside or conflict with similar yet more effective programs and continuously persist in annoying the user. For example, an effective popup blocker will show a message after successfully blocking a popup. However, SP2's popup blocker will either miss the popup, or appear over the third party popup blockers window, creating an annoyance for the user who has to close two windows. SP2's 'butting in' over other applications is probably fueled by Microsoft's desire to beat or own the competition - in this case, refusing to detect a more effective popular third party popup blocking application due to the fact that it is not owned or related to Microsoft. In some cases, the user is forced to discard one of these applications, sometimes with SP2 Popup blocker prevailing. Most components of SP2 are basically simple, yet annoying warnings regarding the download of suspicious files. If you hadn't ordered to download a program, what would make you download a program appearing from no-where? Overall, SP2 is a trouble causing update that should be avoided if you already have applications that do the job that SP2 says it will. Rather that downloading a 70MB file, consult experienced computers for a better and smaller sized alternative.