I’m starting to get sick of IE’s security issues. I’ve had to report on two new ones this week alone. And today’s isn’t even patched yet. Thankfully I’m running XP SP2 everywhere I work…
Hopefully this’ll help encourage all the people who are saying “there’s nothing worth upgrading for in XP SP2″ to switch. It’s not about new features. It’s about an entirely new security model which saves your ass more than you’ll ever know, and this is just one example.
Microsoft needs to get in gear and start dealing with IE soon. It’s rather difficult to ignore the effects when you have to write a daily article on new issues with the software.
November 5th, 2004 at 10:41 am
Wouldn’t just using a more secure browser be a bit easier than updating one’s OS?
November 5th, 2004 at 11:43 am
Definitely, but the biggest stumbling block is the fact that home users are oblivious to this sort of thing. The big blue “e” is “the internet” to them. These security bulletins rarely see the light of day in terms of mainstream news coverage so it largely goes ignored by everyone except web developers and those in corporate IT departments.
November 5th, 2004 at 11:48 am
Vinnie, I agree with you (that the “e” is the internet to many home users); but I don’t think they’re the type of people who continually update their OS either.
The gov’t down here made a nice little headline when they endorsed FireFox. It’ll just take a few more of those to reach some more people.
The people who aren’t reached aren’t going to do either thing in my opinion (switch or update).
November 5th, 2004 at 12:14 pm
That’s not the point. The vulnerability affects several other pieces of software including Office and Lotus Notes. Unless you’re suggesting users changing ALL their software is somehow easier than downloading an 80MB CRITICAL OS update…
November 5th, 2004 at 12:25 pm
I see a post entitled “getting sick of IE”, not “getting sick of XP security flaws (for multiple programs)”.
And to be honest – I would suggest changing any software is easier than starting over, because that’s what I keep seeing done. I’ve had to start a handful of machines from scratch because an installation of SP2 simply didn’t take (they became sluggist and many major programs were shot). It was a backup-format-copy-reconfigure situation on those machines (one of them I just uninstalled SP2). Complete days shot because of SP2. It was quite a nightmare for other people here at my office.
Things may have gone smooth for you, but I’ve had to help a ton of people through SP2 problems. I didn’t tell anyone else to uninstall like I did because I don’t want to be responsible for how they use their computer afterwards. Yes, more security on your machine is great – but only if it works in the first place.
November 5th, 2004 at 12:35 pm
David, when you had issues with the SP2 installation, did you do this? http://www.ensight.org/archives/2004/10/31/free-xp-sp2-support/
November 5th, 2004 at 12:47 pm
No, this happened a while back (very shortly after SP2 was released) before I knew about the free support – but honestly, do you really expect that to be a quick phone call for multiple machines? My issue is time above everything else otherwise I wouldn’t have a problem re-doing the machines.
November 5th, 2004 at 1:12 pm
“honestly, do you really expect that to be a quick phone call for multiple machines?”
Depends. Maybe your call would have helped Microsoft nail the problem which caused issues with millions of machines, specifically the rest.
The reality is that it’s easy to complain about a problem with software. But if nobody tells the vendor and allows them to troubleshoot, it’s unlikely it’ll ever be fixed.
It could be something as simple as the type of RAM you were using and something tiny in SP2 causing a conflict at that level.
November 5th, 2004 at 1:21 pm
That all definitely crossed my mind – but so did “it’s never that easy” – sure, it might be – but experience told me that the quickest solution (that works fully) was just to backup and reload as fast as possible. A secure, working machine, and probably the least amount of time compared to test, reboot x 30 and possibly repeating.
The only reason I did want to contact them was to possibly let them know about a couple of problems with some programs – I generally do things like that – even when I find a solution (to let them know what it is I did); I consider that similar to following-up on your own post on a message forum about a problem-solution you solve yourself, you leave a note so future people have both there.
Anyway for my feedback about this to mean anything would have meant a detailed report of my systems and what’s wrong and I simply couldn’t devote the resources to that.
November 5th, 2004 at 1:49 pm
Don’t worry mate, I’m not saying it’s your fault… Just that the reality is that XP SP2 has protected against many of the recent bugs. While I’m sick of reporting on how bad IE is, I’m quite comfortable using it on XP SP2 because I know I’m safe from all but 1 in the last few months.
November 5th, 2004 at 2:37 pm
there’s nothing worth upgrading for in XP SP2
Seriously though, I personally don’t have any need to that I can see – I opened MSIE to download Firefox 1.0 RC2, and haven’t opened it again since. Occasionally I will open it to test a DIV/CSS layout, but that’s local. I never browse with MSIE, I have a hardware firewall (which I’ll add I don’t even have enabled at the moment), and I can’t think of any other practical reasons to install it. Just me though, I suppose.
November 5th, 2004 at 3:03 pm
I don’t know the specifics of how XP SP2 may protect me better – just that it probably patches a lot of MS security holes. But I think I get a lot of protection from Kerio, Norton, and AdAware. I barely use IE anymore, and only on sites that I think are safe and don’t work with Firefox. I’ve had way too much ad/scum/mal-ware installed under IE.
November 6th, 2004 at 1:37 am
My brother and his girlfriend both work for Microsoft’s support (were doing support for Win XP SP2, and are now moving towards HP) and even they say that it’s a horrible piece of crap.