Win XP SP2 vs Word 97

Well I did my first uninstall of Win XP SP2 today. Not mine - a clients. He called and told me he was having trouble with his Word 97. Upon startup it was giving him registry errors. When trying to save a file it would use only the first letter of the name - you could see it truncate the name just as you hit the save button. First thing I asked was, 'Well what have you installed lately?'

He said, 'Nothing.'

Well I tried to reinstall Word 97. No luck. I tried the office update site - it said we were current (as current as Office 97 will probably ever be).

'Well then , when did it start?'

'About a week or so ago.'

'Did you install SP2?'

Okay here was the answer. His settings were to download and ask to install windows updates. When asked he said okay. I went to the Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs and tried to remove SP2. No luck - it said it had already been deleted (no it hadn't).

Restore Points to the rescue. Rolled the machine back to Aug 20th. I then had to update the McAfee firewall - he had just done it so it rolled back as well. McAfee need a better update system then the one they have. He was also going to have to reinstall a banking fuction he had recently added - I left that to him. I then set windows update to check only - no auto download or installs.

I prefer not to ever be the first on major updates. I know Microsoft has had some terrible security holes and much of SP2 is to try and fix that (very debatable). But MS has not had the best record of getting things right the first time. Unless there is some compelling reason to install SP2 I'd wait for a few months and see what happens to others. There are better ways to security that I've talked about here before. Use a NAT router, install a firewall (I prefer Zonealarm), use alternate browsers and mail clients (Mozilla is my first choice).