Microsoft Windows XP Professional UPGRADE with SP2

I was a little nervous to attempt an upgrade from Windows 98 to XP because of some of the problems I've read that individuals had doing so. When I began the upgrade, there was a option to select that would test your PC to see if it was upgradeable and it told me that mine was not. However, when I restarted my PC with the upgrade DISC already installed, the upgrade began it's process. There's an option to print out instructions during the installation, I suggest that one do this so that you can have a paper copy of what to do next. Once I picked the correct options, the upgrade proceded without a hitch. Make sure you have at least 128MB of RAM and free hardrive memory space before you begin. The XP installation was a success and now it's like I have a new PC. I love it.

I work for a small business, and have need of 6 pc's logging onto my computer. We have Windows XP Home edition currently, but Home edition would only allow 5 pc's at a time to log on to my pc. We purchased the upgrade from Amazon.com, and shortly recieved the package. I backed up our data, just in case something went wrong. In the middle of the installation, the setup program was unable to read one of the files on the disc, and caused an error that could not be averted. It would not let me move forward in the installation, nor would it let me return to Windows Home edition. So, in short, I'm stuck until I get another disc in here. The company I purchased it from was very un-helpful (Tech for less) in helping me to find a replacement disc. This setback caused us many problems for us for about 3 weeks, which is an eternity for a small business. I don't know how functional this upgrade is, as I never got it installed, but I highly recommend that if you purchase this upgrade, you have a spare readily available or at least a back-up plan in case it fails. Cheers

I needed an XP Professional upgrade so that my office network could include a PC originally shipped with the XP Home version. The software arrived quickly and in good condition. It was genuine Microsoft and exactly as described. After downloading the zillion updates since SP2 the computer is working fine.

There are issues regarding hardware incompatibility w/ specific components of the Toshiba Satellite M45-S355. The hardware incompatibility issues w/ the DVD-RAM drive, the GL910 chipset, and the SoundMax integrated audio drivers are known to both Microsoft Technical Service personnel and their counterparts at Toshiba. I spent an hour of fruitless time on a conference call with technicians from both companies (both of whom spoke what could loosely be descibed as "English"). The Amazon representative with whom I spoke was in New Delhi. I ultimately figured out (on my own) which Toshiba drivers needed to be downloaded (again consuming hours of download time with a 56K modem), and I used an Iomega CD-Rom USB external drive to load the software after about six extremely aggravating hours. I was able to avoid similar pitfalls when attempting to install Small Business Accounting 2006. Don't buy these products unless you absolutely MUST. Microsoft's "technical service" is a euphemism more aptly meaning "technically useless". There is nothing technically professional about the additional capabilities of Microsoft XP Professional. I should also mention that both the Toshiba laptop and the software were purchased from Amazon.

Just in case you haven't already heard, Microsoft stopped supporting this. On my wife's Dell laptop computer, one of the Service Pack upgrade (I can't remember whether it was SP2) completely corrupted the disk drive. A web search showed that some other people suffered the same experience. I spent days trying to fix the problem, but never succeeded. That's $900 plus my wife's valuable information destroyed. Bill Gates has $40-60 billion. You'd think he could pay back the people whose computers he destroyed. On all of the other computers on which I used XP and some of its service packs, I was actually pretty happy with it. It was a big improvement over Windows 95/98. It worked with most of my external hardware and add-in cards without a lot of hassle. I would have strongly recommended it for new installations, although I would have warned people to be very careful about upgrades to XP and Service Packs within XP. But, again, this is no longer supported, so you should not buy it unless you have an extremely good reason (and an absolutely reliable backup of your data).

I have been running Windows XP since 2001 and to tell you the honest truth it has been stable ever since. With the introduction of SP2 in this minor update of Windows XP, Microsoft has decided to make the product "secure", than it was thought to be in the beginning. But the past few years have been rough on Microsoft, with consistency in attacks on the product with such vulnerabilities as Trojans, buffer overflows, viruses and the most memorable of the all Blaster (August 2003). Ever since its debut, Windows XP has been causing a lot of headaches and wreaking havoc on corporate networks because of its susceptibility vulnerabilities that were not fixed in its initial release or Service Pack 1. So Microsoft decided to go back to the drawing board and decided to rethink what Windows XP should mean in terms of Security. At first Service Pack 2 was thought out to only be a minor Service Pack update with usual bug fixes, but because of the aforementioned problems Microsoft took new direction and after 1 year of testing we have finally reached a conclusion. SP2 is really apparent, based on my experience of installing the update, users displayed a welcome screen recommending Automatic Updates be turned on (and I would recommend too), after which the user is presented with the Security Center where you can configure the new and improved Firewall settings, such as which programs can access your PC. You also have the option of configuring your Anti-Virus program, unfortunately I have not been able to do so because my Anti-virus is not supported, although it seems (Norton Anti-virus Corporate Edition 7.6). Security Center is really the big change here and should have been implemented from beginning, but better late than never. Other great features which I and many users are undoubtedly thankful for include the Pop-Blocker which should have been included in IE 6 from the beginning (better late than never), its not 100 % percent effective but does a decent job so far of blocking most annoying Pop-Ups. I wish the Windows Team allowed users to train it, so if a Pop does succeed, you can tell the pop-up blocker engine that was a pop-up window and you shouldn't let that pass the next time, maybe Microsoft will let it improve over time. Other great improvements to IE in SP2 is the ability approve programs, so drive by downloads have become a thing of the past, anything you decide to download or accidentally clicked on a webpage has to be approved. Another wish is, better integration of the ActiveX controls with Microsoft's own technologies, I notice that when I had to do a Office Update, the ActiveX API engine on Microsoft's Office website had to be approved before I run the utility that checked for updates for Office products I needed. Microsoft has also streamlined Windows Update to be more user-friendly, you the user have the option for a Express or Custom install, Express only installs the most critical updates, while Custom allows to install the entire kitchen sink, including stuff some users can do without on Windows, (go with Express). Windows XP SP2 includes minor enhancements such as Windows Media Player 9, but why didn't Microsoft just wait a little longer and included Windows Media Player 10, which is already out? The blue tooth update is also a needed update, it wasn't intuitive right out of the box, but is more user friendly, all this, you can get for free if you are existing XP owner. Overall, if you haven't upgraded to Windows XP yet from older versions of Windows, this is the time, but if you are an existing Windows XP user, I say skip this and just order the SP2 CD or download it from the Windows XP Website. I highly recommend users running prior versions of XP especially 95, 98, 98 SE, NT 4 and ME, maybe 2000 also move to XP, since Microsoft is planning on porting any of technologies in XP to those older versions of Windows, plus it has some great new features and you will love the Security technologies that provide a better experience for you the user. Most of all, I highly recommend Windows XP users get this update!

What can you say its software....its was priced OK, shipping was free and it arrived when promised....no worries, Mon!! Revived an HP laptop that fried its hard drive. CONS; Count 'em 107 updates were required upon installation.....yes you read it right that is 107 updates....took longer to download and install the updates via a wireless connection that it did to install op sys and all the required drivers in the first place. LOVE Windows!!

After installation frustration I went back to Windows 2000 Pro. I ended up partitioning my hard drive and installed XP Pro on the second partition so that I could always fall back to Windows 2000. The *update installer* on the CD was not working correctly and I used the restore points to undo all updates. When SP3 was installed ALL my problems went away. I have a cloned OS hard drive so that I never have to re-install out-of-the-box.