SP2 or not to SP2?

[Snafu]

I have started to see a few posts about ram not working after the SP2 install. Some posts are requesting an RMA because it is not working at thier previous oc settings.

What gives with SP2?

I think I might have to hold off installing SP2 until I have an idea whether I will have to RMA my 3700EB - a rare commodity I hear that I do not want to give up (unless there is something better out there :D: ).

[malinois1]

I have started to see a few posts about ram not working after the SP2 install. Some posts are requesting an RMA because it is not working at thier previous oc settings.

What gives with SP2?

I think I might have to hold off installing SP2 until I have an idea whether I will have to RMA my 3700EB - a rare commodity I hear that I do not want to give up (unless there is something better out there :D: ).

Well I upgrades to sp2 and the 3500EB is working just as well as it did before. I hear there is a problem with some prescotts associated with some mobo bios's but havent heard of Ram being a problem.

[Snafu]

Good to hear. There have been some posts requesting help or rma 'cause they are having problems. SteveOCZ noted that some folks are having troubles with SP2.
Here's one thread:
http://www.bleedinedge.com/forum/showthread.php?p=38425#post38425
(using an AMD 64)
I am wondering if it's just coincidence that some folks are having trouble with SP2 and thier system or if there is a valid concern?

[joeMan]

Snafu - as you already know, I'm not OCing, but I wanted to jump in here and say that I am running SP2 for about 2 1/2 weeks now and the only problems I have had are:

1) Booting Slow ever since installed. Booting from Welcome screen to (usable) desktop is about 60 seconds now, where before SP2 it was very fast - like about 10-12 seconds.

and

2) Java Virtual Machine (Latest Version from their website even) does not run properly. It's only an annoyance because I use it in conjunction with dslreport.com Speedtest function to test my Comcast Internet cable connection Up/Down speed. No Biggy.

Everything else just fine - no problems at all...once booted up my rig functions smooth as silk and fast as before SP2...

[Snafu]

Hey joeMan. Thanks for the news from Cali.

That is a huge jump in boot times by a factor of 4-5. Did you check whats taking so long using bootvis? Is there any advantage to SP2 - are the differences mainly critical & security updates?

Eww. I hate long boot up times and try everything to get it to boot faster (Ideally I would like the log-in screen to pop-up as soon as the monitor warms up - guess I'm asking too much :lol: )

Maybe I should make a disk clone (going to do it right this time :lol: ) before upgrading to SP2. This way if SP2 becomes whacky I can switch back. Food for thought.

[joeMan]

Snafu, here is what Bootvis reports -

Everything normal up to 18 seconds at which explorer.exe (524) executes then a looooong pause of nothing happening until at 60 seconds a program called wuauclt.exe (808) executes, then boot to my usable desktop...

What do you make of that...?? :scratch:

I looked up wuauclt.exe (Googled it) and it is a Microsoft .executable that has something to do with the autoupdater system. I have auto updates turned off via System Properties >Auto Updates tab - AND - Administrative Tools >Services too (just to be sure).

I tried using the "Optimize" function of Bootvis after the Trace, but to no avail (although I have read that the "Optimize" function is of little to no use on XP systems and that Bootvis is only good as a visualization tool for trouble shooting boot-up problems)

That looong pause is adding 42 seconds to my boot up and it wasn't there until after SP2 install...

oh well, in the big picture of life I guess it's not killin' me - but then again IT SURE IS IRRITATIN' :bonk: :yikes: when I get to dwellin' on it!!

**EDIT** Looks like I'm not alone, I just found numerous links via Google regarding Slow and/or long(er) boot up time and SP2 and XP...

[Paragon]

Hi joeMan :wave:

wuauclt.exe is the Windows auto update client and basically upon every boot it searches for auto updates from MS before it will allow the computer to boot...You could try turning off auto updates and see if this helps your boot time at all.

[Snafu]

I'm gonna give bootvis a retry here and look into the services - I wonder if you can over-ride auto update by turning off the service?

I have not used Bootvis to optimise XP but run TuneXP.

[Snafu]

Ran bootvis and could not find wuauclt.exe running anywhere in the trace (before and after the boot-up). Yours must be running from somewhere and it is not quite disabled.

I had it enabled at one point but after it became annoying popping up in the system try I turned off the autoupdate through the icon in the system tray (did not disable it through admin tools). Does it still pop up every once in a while?

One interesting thing I am seeing is that with the disk I/O bootvis is telling that disk writing cache is disabled :scratch: ? I wonder if this is off during boot-up - I didn't pay for these drives not to use thier cache :irk: .

PS - according to bootvis my boot time is 29.21 seconds but stuff running afterwards until the 53 second mark. Will need to keep this in mind after installing SP2

[joeMan]

First to answer your questions: No, my Auto Updates message doesn't pop up every once in awhile in the system tray in spite of it being turned off.
And, I read in a forum that Bootvis will erroneuously report that message even though it is not the case (about disk write caching being disabled), it does the same to me.

Auto Updates is turned OFF. Then I went into Admin Tools>Services and Disabled it completely, then rebooted. Didn't help - Still Slooow. Hmmmm....

Well, this problem isn't crippling me, I'm still working in Photoshop like a madman lately, and the wife and kids are on and off this thing constantly day in and day out...MS Word, Excel, The SIMS, Adobe Photoshop 7.0, IE Explorer, Outlook Express, Winamp, Star Wars Galaxies, Steam and various other apps are all are functioning normally.

I am going to keep chipping away at this though until my boot time gets back down...

I read on one forum that part of the problem may be that SP2 has built in firewall mandatory activated and that if my modem/router setup also has it that the redundancy may be slowing down the bootup process as well. Something to do with my PC not initializing itself on the network as quickly as it used to before SP2? I am not to hot on all the networking stuff - I just have it set to "Auto Configure". I have a Cable/DSL Router and Modem, both LINKSYS and they have rocked since day one. Might have something to do with that since that last thing that occurs before the long 42 second pause is Explorer.exe - perhaps at that point Explorer.exe is waiting for my network connection/address to initialize and it is taking a long time because of the firewall issue(s) ???

**EDIT/UPDATE** I disabled Firewall on my LAN and rebooted twice, still same long boot time. Also, I think the Firewall redundancy issue is one wherein Windows XP built in Firewall under LAN properties/Advanced tab may conflict with people running additional firewalls such as third party software like Symantec, or McAfee etc....so now I don't THINK it has anything to do with my LINKSYS router and modem...

[Snafu]

I'm stumped as you. If it's off then it should be off. Maybe MS have a different definition of "off".

Glad it doesn't irk you (oops I reminded you of the long boot times :hide: ).

UI shouldn't joke. Maybe this is why boot times are longer with SP2 'cause SP2 doesn't give you a choice about autoupdates.

Maybe someone reading this with SP2 and bootvis can post if they have longer boot times due to the autoupdate via teh "wuauclt.exe" file.

[Shayd]

Hmm...all this talk about boot delays I decided to download BootVis and check it out.

Running XP Pro with SP2 all default and I'm booting at 22.25 secs. Wonder what is going on with you guys?

Here is my system bootvis file for comparing:
www.shaydsworld.com/BEImages/TRACE_BOOT+DRIVERS_1_1.zip

[joeMan]

Looks pretty righteous Shayd...are you running 2 CPU's? Anyway, I don't even see wuauclt.exe on your bootvis...weird man...where did i get this wuauclt.exe popping up from? Why don't you have it? Hmmm...

Anyway, I'm going to keep looking around...

Also something strange - I dont get any Boot activity graph on my bootvis report...it shows up, but it's blank...

[Snafu]

Okay - I'm jealous that you are 7 seconds faster :lol: .
PS I did not mention that if shut off the antivirus autoprotect boots time drop by 15 seconds :D: .

[Snafu]

Sorry I can't dl the file (>9MB) cause I'm 56K challenged :O: . I wish I could see it and the "Boot Activity" graph

I can't figure out why your file is so large :scratch: ? My trace log is only 230kb uncompressed.

Which version of Bootvis do you have? I am running 1.3.37.0 and thought it was the last version MS put out.

[Shayd]

hmm...same version as you Snafu. I loaded it and ran it at defaults. My bin size is huge being 53meg uncompressed? That is why I zipped it for others.

[joeMan]

:rock: Once again, Event Viewer has led me to my solution...I went in there and saw that on all my long reboots I have had two services that were starting up at the end of the looong wait time (just before usable desktop):

1 - Shell Hardware Detection
and
2 - Application Layer Gateway Service

So I went in to Services and saw that out of all my running services, these were the only two set to MANUAL rather than Automatic. So I switched them both to Automatic, rebooted and BAM!!! 19 SECOND BOOT. :D

Righteous. :thumbs:

I guess my PC was taking an extra 40 seconds to get those two services to "enter a running state" as Event Viewer puts it, then it would finally boot my usable desktop. Had nothing to do with wuauclt.exe the whole time... :bonk:

Live and learn. Thanks for your help guys. :beer:

[Snafu]

19 seconds is awesome joeMan :rock:

In comparison to my trace files 53MB is huge. I probably have some option not set with when I run bootvis (?). I also let it run for 2.5 minutes just to see what's running after boot. The only graphs visible are Driver delay, Cpu Usage, Disk I/O and Disk Utilization.

Either way joeMan system boots in a decent time :rock:

[Shayd]

Nice sleuthing Joeman! :rock:

[Snafu]

Well finally installed SP2 - talk about changes. Holy carp. So far all for the good.

According to Bootvis my boot times jumped a bit from just under 30 seconds to just under 35 seconds. I am pretty sure the extra 5 seconds is my fault. I added a password login.

So overall I am impressed with the update. Even with DirectX9c to find out how pitiful my 9600xt runs with 3DMark 2005 :lol: .

[BB_One]

Ummm...well good for you Snafu.

Finally someone that seems to be please with Sp2. :thumb:

When u read reviews and industry watch they sure raise enough alarms bells to keep users from going sp2. :|

Anyhow, next platform will be xp pro so I can fell better when prompted to do sp2 then. :beer:

[Snafu]

Well boot times is only one measurable aspect I found to be the same as before. So no real negative on SP2. I did notice that IE now blocks pop-ups and tells you when it does. Not bad.

I did not like MS warning about the fear they try to instill in you regarding turning off automatic updates :irk: but this is only a minor irritant.

So far so good on this side.

Cheers et bon sior

[ThugsRook]

no way, not me :eek:

[malinois1]

I have been running Sp2 since it first came out with XPpro and it works great on my end :thumb:

[Snafu]

The pop-up blocking is a neat feature but it blocks new PM's from popping up in a separate window even though you say it is okay to open in a new window :lol:

[malinois1]

My pop-up blocker in sp2 doesnt detect any pop-ups thanks to Zone Alarm :p :rock:

[glorfy]

Well...Everything has been stable until today, and very fine until today! I'vebeen getting repeated BSODs! BAD_POOL_HEADER! Mostly while trying to post here! So if this doesn't make it you won't be reading this!

The recommended fix is to disable indexing services in services.msc - which I have now done, and will monitor the results if it doesn't work :smash:

[pointreyes]

Family Computer: Canterwood chipset system with a 2.6c oc'ed to 3.25-no problems.
Video Encoding computer: Canterwood chipset system with a 2.8e oc'ed to 3.08-required new installation of OS.
Oracle Database computer: Dual Opteron (AMD 8xxx chipset) system with 4x512 Meg of RAM using PAE. Had to disable DEP on dxdiag and Explorer, after that no problems.

[Snafu]

Check out this thread (http://www.bleedinedge.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4918) in the News. Very interesting. Thanks Paragon.

[Paragon]

Here's one of the best articles I've seen to date on SP2 Pros and Cons...For those that aren't familiar with Scott Finnie, he's a freelance consultant that's in the middle of just about everything software and hardware wise...I've subscribed to his newsletter for about 3 year now.

Link (http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/63.htm)

[FB]

I have been running SP2 for almost 3 months now, with no issues :)

[glorfy]

I previously posted that I had problems with IE, and SP2 - I now retract that! After running stable for weeks at 235x10 on my set up, it is now very unstable on the Lan port and the SATA connectors - to the extent of checking the file system everytime I reboot. I set everything to 215x11 and evrything is now stable. SP2 seems rock solid for me. :thumb: