No more buggy than any other piece of Microsoft software. But, if you have spyware on your computer, you may have severe problems.
A range of problems I have seen when people attempt to install Service Pack 2 on a spyware-infected or virii'd system:

* Bluescreen on reboot
* Missing files errors on reboot
* Welcome screen with no usernames (just the XP logo)
* Windows activation errors when trying to login
* Internet connection stops working completely
* CD drives stop working (no shit)

Windows XP Service Pack 2 statistics at my job (after cleaning spyware which EVERYONE FUCKING HAS) are something like 2000 fully successful, 50 recoverable failure, 5 total failure. (Total failures were post-install unrecoverable systems, and does not include SP2 installs which refused to even begin.)

But as I said, if your system is clean you should have no problems.

Well, my files are all clear here, but i you just made me realise that i should wait a lil' more... heheh I'm not doing it so soon... Anyways, thanks a lot Snover.

If you have good firewall software and are using not Internet Explorer, you should be fine without installing it. I myself am not installing it because I do not wish to fuck about with the stupid TCP/IP stack which they limited to 5 opening connections.

One other thing to be aware of -- if you use ZoneAlarm, be sure you have version 5. If you install SP2 with version 4, your system will go through a continuous cycle of spontaneous reboots. Uninstall ZoneAlarm 4 BEFORE you install SP2.

Be sure to install all other Window Update updates before installing SP2.
From my experience, when installing SP2 first, it may fuck up your computer.

I have installed SP2 a few weeks ago and had no problems with it since.

Mirek

I have also installed SP2 from scratch and didn't have any problems either. 😎

PS - Using any flavour of Windows Operating Systems and being outdated, seems like a very risky thing to me. If you use Windows, please keep it updated, at least at critical patches level.

My roommates and I have had no problems with SP2, but we keep our computers squeaky clean with virus and spyware scanners, Windows Update fixes, latest drivers, etc.

Some people I know that were using weird beta stuff and spyware-infested systems had a lot of problems and either backed out of SP2 or are now living with broken half-installs. I keep telling them they should reinstall Windows from scratch.

I also had a friend whose computer we wiped clean and reinstalled, and every time we installed either SP2 or a new video driver, it would go into an infinite reboot loop. I have NO idea what was happening there!

If you keep your own computer up to date, I'd advise disabling the Sercurity Center service. It's just fucking annoying. "Symantec Corporate Anti-virus 9 status is unknown. Please buy some new anti-virus software that you must pay for the priviledge of downloading updates every year"

Not bloodly likely...

HunterZ wrote:

I also had a friend whose computer we wiped clean and reinstalled, and every time we installed either SP2 or a new video driver, it would go into an infinite reboot loop. I have NO idea what was happening there!

Yay bad RAM!

for that ye have this

http://www.memtest86.com/

Luckily most RAM has lifetime warranty on it.

I'd recommend http://www.memtest.org/ instead 😀

And of course you can run that off of the Ultimate Boot CD too.

http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/index.html