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eXPerienced diSPleasure 2

In Computing on 8 September 2004 tagged Computing with 3 comments

I’m a little tired this morning. I’m going to blame Microsoft for this. I’ll explain why over an extra large cup of Tim Horton’s coffee.

I’ve recently signed-on to help out the good people working on the Freehauler space trading simulation. I’m going to help with the development effort and to do this as cleanly as possible, I decided it was time to wipe and upgrade my PC to Windows XP Pro (from Home). Sounds pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? After a couple of hours of backing stuff up to CD and DVD, I was ready for the darkness.

First mistake: Initiating the install from the Setup icon on the XP Pro install disc within Windows. This will get you a new installation of XP Pro if you tell it to do that and not “Upgrade” your existing installation, but what it doesn’t do is clean up your drive. So, after the install was finished, I had a bunch of folders in Program Files, Docs and Settings and other places. I considered this one last chance to back stuff up and promptly ignored this feeling and set my BIOS to boot off the CD so I could do a drive reformat.

Second mistake: Not keeping a copy of SP1 on a CD somewhere for safe-keeping.

Apparently new copies of Windows XP (Home and Pro) come with SP1 on a CD. This is a nice touch because it saves you from having to download a slew of updates and upgrades. I had no such edition, shelling out my hard-earned OS bucks for an early, non SP’d edition. This wouldn’t be a big deal if Microsoft hadn’t removed all the links to SP1. I’m still leary of SP2 and wanted to wait for other people to install it before I bit off that particular bullet. Unfortunately, due to the lack of SP1 goodness, I was forced to download the Demon Itself and install it up.

Windows Update now nags you with message boxes and other bits of dancing baloney on their webpage to turn on Auto Updater. I have steadfastly refused, turning the feature and the service off. I’ll update when I want to, damn it.

After the obligatory 23rd reboot, SP2 was installed. I was greeted with a hideous window called the “Windows Security Center” with three big sections proclaiming my Firewall was active (with a helpful, “glowing” green light), but that my Automatic Update was turned off (big red light) and that I wasn’t running any Anti Virus software (another big red light). Underneath these sections were “helpful” suggestions on how to secure my computer which amounted to turning on auto-update (I SAID NO!) and installing a virus checker. Note that there are no actual controls to the “Security Center” – its only purpose is to scare the user. Also, it will appear every time you start your computer from then on until you set it to not notify you of security problems (or, like me, turn it the hell off). Microsoft’s take on the Security Center is:

When it comes to managing your Windows XP security settings, the new Windows Security Center is your command central. At a glance, you can monitor your current level of PC protection, including: firewall status, automatic update settings, and virus protection.

Wow!

The next disabled “feature” was the Firewall.

Turned on by default, the new, built-in Windows Firewall helps defend your PC against viruses and intruders who try to access your computer over the Internet.

Myself, like many other users have a really nice piece of hardware sitting between my computer and the evil nasty world. In fact, anyone using the internet without one of these pieces of gear (or sufficiently powerful software running on a dedicated box) is a bigger noob than I am and deserves to be made fun of. I don’t care what your OS is, it’s not safe. Windows turning this “feature” on without asking is making itself a bigger pain in the ass than it needs to be. Oh, and turning it off in the Windows Firewall settings in the Control Panel doesn’t actually Turn it Off. When I rebooted afterwards, the Security Center came up telling me my computer was Firewalled (green light) but the settings in the Firewall settings still showed “Disabled” (and not recommended). Curiouser and curiouser… Perhaps the Security Center… doesn’t work? A quick trip to my admin options and I disabled both the Security Center and the Firewall services.

The next new feature actually made me laugh out loud. My first fresh-system download was to be Mozilla Firefox. One of the vaunted new features of XP SP2 is a brand new update to Internet Explorer 6 which has been lying in stagnation for several years now. Their new feature? Blocked popup ads! Hey, it’s about time. It’s still not enough to get me to use their browser though. So, I clicked on the Firefox download page and up pops a little message bar at the top of IE informing me that my download has been blocked for security reasons. Then a big bubble popped up next to the message bar explaining what it was (it was for security). This is the point when I started laughing. Clicking on the message bar gave me a few options one of which was “download”. Thank you for forcing me to click there to save my computer!

With Firefox installed, the Firewall turned off and Security Center safely stowed, I was able to continue using my computer and installing updates in a relatively unimpeded fashion. SP2′s great when you turn it off.

So much for security. They should really have called SP2 a Security Blanket, because that’s about all the protection you get from it. The Security Center is butt-ugly and looks amateurish. The enhancements to IE are intrusive and prevent me from doing what I want to do. In fact, the whole security layer they’ve bolted on top of Windows is bound to be more of a pain than a boon to most people, flinging up dialogs and trying to scare the user with dire warnings of impending destruction brought about by their poorly maintained computer. Most people will turn these features off and forget about them and they should. If they themselves are not smart enough to do it, they’ll enlist a family nerd to do it for them.

• The Register: Win XP SP2 = Security Placebo?

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