The folks at Techweb claim that without SP2 or a third-party firewall, your computer will fall to hacker bots in just four minutes:
AvanteGarde deployed half a dozen systems in “honeypot” style, using default security settings. It then analyzed the machines’ performance by tallying the attacks, counting the number of compromises, and timing how long it took an attack to successfully hijack a computer once it was connected to the Internet.
The six machines were equipped with Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1), Microsoft Windows XP SP1 with the free ZoneAlarm personal firewall, Microsoft Windows XP SP2, Macintosh OS X 10.3.5, and Linspire’s distribution of Linux.
Not surprisingly, Windows XP SP1 sans third-party firewall had the poorest showing.
“In some instances, someone had taken complete control of the machine in as little as 30 seconds,” said Marcus Colombano, a partner with AvanteGarde, and, along with former hacker Kevin Mitnick, a co-investigator in the experiment. “The average was just four minutes. Think about that. Plug in a new PC–and many are still sold with Windows XP SP1–to a DSL line, go get a cup of coffee, and come back to find your machine has been taken over.”
Windows XP SP1 with the for-free ZoneAlarm firewall, however, as well as Windows XP SP2, fared much better. Although both configurations were probed by attackers, neither was compromised during the two weeks.
Still waiting for more proof?
I’ll say it again: Tens of millions of computers are running SP2 successfully. If you try to install it and you have problems, that means you have an issue with your hardware or your software. In either case, it should be relatively easy to find and fix. That won’t be the case if your machine is compromised by a worm, a virus, or a virulent piece of spyware.
Ed Bott 
Had a friend in Switerland just today, his WD harddrive failed, so he picked up a new one.. started installing Windows XP (without SP1 or SP2) and before he even finished installing Zonealarm he got infected with 6 Trojans.. after installing Zonealarm (and before he knew he had the Trojans) he installed Norton AV, and on it’s first scan it found the Trojans.
So might be a good idea if you don’t have a Windows XP SP2 CD, to disconnect from the network while installing Windows.
If nothing else, even if you do have a hardware conflict, it’s a good time to upgrade that old videocard (or other component) anyway.
Has anyone tried CD Spectrum Pro on XP Pro With SP2 Installed? I’m getting noisey MP3 Playback no matter what I tried!
I was interested in you comments on SP2. Having had a number of very bad experiences with SP2, I do not normally install SP2 with XP when I am trying to repair other peoples machines.
I do, however, apply all current security patches before connecting to Internet. My own trials here showed the mean lifetime of an unpatched XP on the net to be about 20 seconds.
What problems with SP2? Installed on a brand new lap-top, the performance was so degraded that it was rarely able to negotiate a dial up connection – SP2 was much worse than being infected by a dialer! Yesterday I made the mistake of applying a newley downloaded SP2 to an XP Pro machine – Explorer crashed on any desktop operation – even after cleaning out all shell extensions. OK, format the disk, install XP, install SP1 – all OK, install SP2 – forget it, desktop dead – only software in the machine was XP and SP!
Have to say i’ve had similar problems with SP2 & never install it, ever!
About 2 years ago i went out & brought components to build myself a brand new PC. Brought an Nforce2 based motherboard (MSI K7n2 Delta) A radeon 9600, 2 hard drive’s & 512meg ddr ram, i then brought an Athlon 2800+ running a Barton core.
I installed a version of XP which also installed SP2, the computer was so slow i thought i had damaged RAM hardware, scanned everything & no erroes present.
Uninstalled windows xp, formatted the drive & installed just windows XP with SP1 & the computer was perfect, i then downloaded & installed SP2 & again my PC slowed to a crawl.
Rather than things loading pretty much instantly, it would take folders & programs upto 5 minuites to load. I asked a friend of mine (A computer engineer) & he told me that he had a lot of people with the same problems as me & all after installing SP2.
A few weeks ago another mate of mine brought a brand new Alienware PC, top of the range. Anyway after owning it a week with no problems he tried to install some software to use with his new Xbox 360 (Windows media connect 2.0) & was told he needed SP2 installed. He then downloading & installed SP2 & just like with me 2 years ago his brand new computer slowed to a crawl.
It seems no matter what spec your computer is, installing SP2 seriously hurts system performance.
Sorry for such a noob question, but I am about to buy a copy of XP Pro for my home machine (a custom box which heretofore has been running 2000 Pro; I am reluctantly switching to XP so I can use the machine for music/audio production). How would I go about installing only XP & SP1, but not SP2? I tried to find an OEM copy of XP with SP1 only, but all I can find are SP2. Thanks.
Hey SP2 really sucks… Slowed my Pc terribly. But I did like Wmp 11…
So Genius guys up there, any chance of having Wmp11 without SP2 ??
Wow! I did not know that.
I always instantly install any updates that become available.
Phil
I have a clone running Windows XP Pro no SP1 AMD900mhz that I built back in 2000. Performance and accessability had it tweaked at optimal.Roughly around 2003 I installed SP1 to resolve some hardware issues and of course keep my pc secured for web browsing. The performance was still optimal. I then installed SP2 on Sept 2 2006 and viola! should have listened to the folks installing windows XP Pro SP2. Guess I am going to now back up my personal data that built up in the last 6 years and reinstall Windows XP Pro SP1. When will Microsoft ever learn to test their products before deploying to the many homes and businessess. I love microsoft but for now SP2?, you suck!
Hey guys, I just recently discovered a ton of Malicious prgms on my computer, I found and deleted all of them, but now it seems my sound playback has been lowered and slowed down signifigantly. Can anyone help fix this problem?