Install SP2 or not? That is the question.

What started out as a simple memory testing went from that to playing with the L1 bridges on the t-bird 700mhz to fun with SCSI drives and Now I got everything the way I want it.

7x100 = 700mhz now @ 7.5x133 = 1000mhz Stock volts.
2x 2.1gig SCSI seagate drives on a U160 SCSI card Non-raid
256MBs of sdram 2x128MBs
Yeah I know overkill.

So now I'm just finally getting around, and I have installed Windows Xp came with sp1, But should I upgrade to SP2?
Is it really worth having SP2 taking up Cpu cycles that could be use towards F@H?

All I need is AVG and the computer is dedicated to F@H; its not going to surf the net or run anything else. Well maybe BitTorrent once in awhile which it will be saving to fileserver. What do you guys think?

SP2 or not?

Thanks
~Mp

I don't think SP2 will generally harm performance.

The antivirus would be the bigger hog, and then only when files are being moved around and opened and read, so as long as it's doing nothing but FAH, I would think the difference would be negligible.

DEFINITELY install SP2. The security holes it patches will help your system more than any AV program out there. You shouldn't see an appreciable difference in the performance of your system. Trust me, it's worth it...

Updates are no longer being delivered to SP1 or lower systems. I did not even read the post in here, just the title. To answer your question, yes, install SP2 as soon as you get the chance. Security holes w/o SP2 are insane. It may reduce performance on an older system, sometimes noticeably (I have seen the difference first hand in pagefile usage on a 900MHz Duron system w/350MB of RAM). It is not significant, though, and you cannot go without it. Simple as that: install SP2.

Haha that system deserves to be slowed down...

All-right I tried to install SP2 but I don't have enough space to install it. 2 gig drive only 600MBs left of space. I remove all the windows programs, and bloat like Media player, outlook and MSN. I also remove useless themes/mouse pointers and wallpapers. Transfer Pagefile to second 2gig drive. Turn off system restore, and still I barely made a difference in free space.

Any ideas?

That'll be difficult. A base WinXP install is near 2GB to begin with.

It might work if you slipstream SP2 into the install disc. That way it would all be installed normally, and maybe fit; I'm wondering if doing the SP2 update post-install is complaining about not having enough space to create backups and descompress everything in the update and so forth.



Honestly, if this machine is not being used for much, I'd stick a firewall on it and call it good.

Yes, from the 'start' of this thread I was wondering why you advice so anxiously to install SP2 on that rig. He stated as clearly as possible it's going to be a folding rig, so no browsing, nothing. Screw those security patches and fixes, now perhaps some of you're going to call me a loser, or maybe even worse, okay-- but seriously, no real need. Especially if that system will get connected to the internet through a Router (inc. firewall), or through a computer, which is going to be the server (Smoothwall rocks btw).

Install a great AV on it, like AVG (free), its resource usage is very low, so you won't have problems at all. Install a firewall to monitor outgoing / ingoing packets. Close down unneeded processes and ports. That'd be all. No need for hundreds of gigabytes of free-space, that'd be an overkill. Leave that rig on, disable screen saver, and let it fold to cure. Good luck.

Why even AVG?
It is only going to talk to Stanford and nothing else, I am asking for my knowledge too,
as my folding farm has nothing on it but FAH and windows with all up dates turned off.
And any process that did not effect sending/receiving FAH is off.
They are slow as is, I did not want to make it any slower.
Is this wrong or a problem?

just a thought MadProf.

Why not take the opportunity to learn Linux.

Seriously, what better time could there be? You've got a dedicated machine that you can afford to toy around with and don't need for day-to-day use. you want a lightweight performance-orientated OS for folding off. you've got limited hardware capabilities anyway, and Windows gobbles through 256Mb of RAM easily. Linux (at least Knopix-like distros) perform phenomenally well on old hardware and with small amounts of RAM (hell, you can run DSL entirely from RAM with as little as 128Mb).

really, I can't see a reason not to try toying with Linux .

I've already got 1 Linux machine running off a pen drive, and another one running off a live CD! using an 100mb zip drive for storage. All running just for F@H. ROFL! I'm not stupid, I know how to use linux. But for some reason, It seems like windows versions perform better then the linux versions. Perhaps its just a driver issue in most cases.

I've already tried several versions... SUSE 10.1, PcLinuxOS, Mandriva, Ubuntu, DSL, and FEATHER. I'm still an amateur when it comes to linux.

Anyways I took a ride on over to O/S part of the forum and looked at Slipstreaming sticky. Well I did it, I've install windows with SP2, and download all the updates excludes .net frame work/IE7. FF2 FTW!
Leaving me with only 250MBs on the system disk to play with.
There is no page filing on the system disk, and lowered all the reserves for The recycle-bin and system restore to a minimal.

Lucky for me I installed AVG, Ad-aware, Spybot S&D, speedfan, and FOLDING on the second disk along with 512MB page-file.
AVG will be the only background program running.

At the moment I am running prime95 to test the stability on the OC.