upgrade

Hard to advise but the cleaner the system is, the fewer issues folks have.

Norton A/V will work fine . . you just have to tell the security center that you will monitor it yourself until Norton comes out with their update to allow XP to query the AnitVirus for it's status

Norton System works should not be installed with XP anyway . . it does nothing that XP cannot do for you and will get in the way and cause issues, even prior to SP-2.  I would uninstall it.

Not sure what Style XP is.

Adobe Photoshop works fine of every system I have installed SP-2 on.

When you decide to do it ( and you will have to at some point in time to receive critical updates)  . .  prior to installing, run AdAware, Spybot S&D and update your A/V and run a full scan. . disconnect from the internet, disable antivirus and any firewall ( including the XP one )

wrs

I found only one program that didn't work properly after SP2, it was easy cd creator. I just uninstalled the affected program then re-installed and now all is good. BTW, I also have Photoshop, Norton and several other programs on the list of affected programs running with no problems after the upgrade.

I upgraded to SP2 on my desktop (IBM) and notebook (Inspiron 5150). Bought Encyclopedia Britannica 2004 Deluxe last week. No problem with loading on desktop, but wouldn't load on the notebook. Tech guys checked it out and advised that they could only load the CDs after uninstalling SP2. Advised that there were still bugs in SP2 and to wait a month or 2 before installing. Anybody else hearing this?

IMHO a lot of people are blaming SP2 for problems that really have little to do with it. You say it loaded OK on desktop which also had SP2. So the problem on the notebook is not SP2 per se, but something else, possibly a differently configured setting somewhere (that might be a new one introduced with SP2).

I don't have the Britannica CD, but if it failed to load from the autosetup, you could try not using the autorun and use start, run, browse to the CD, there will be a setup file,highlight that click OK. This suggestion is based on a problem reported with autorun set up for Paintshop pro:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;873176

The prtoblem is related to DEP settings, which is new to SP2.

Thanks for the reply JR. I did try to install manually, but kept getting the error message "driver mis-match, exit is the only option". Why installing EB would be a driver issue is beyond me. It was when I returned the EB software to the store (didn't want it if it wouldn't work on both computers) that they had a look and found that the only way to load was to uninstall SP2. They were quite adamant that I wait "until the bugs were fixed" before re-installing SP2. Why it worked on my 5 yr. old desktop is beyond them as well.

If you dont want to get problems on the system then DONT install service pack 2. SP 2 is a new release SP of xp and there are probably lots of bugs on SP 2. Most of the programs will not work properly when you install SP 2. :) So, in my opinion, i would never install SP 2 as of now not until next year where everything will be ok or fixed.

Please see the link below.

Thanks 100mph. Very informative links. Just as an update, I have been trying to get this fixed with Microsoft support. They have tried a lot of fixes, but nothing works. Since I meet most of the criteria listed on your link as to why I might not need SP2 (use firefox vs IE, outlook vs OE, use SyyDoctor, Adaware 6, Spybot, Norton AV), I'm giving up on SP2 for now.

Dell has advised that my problem is outdated Nvidia video card. I went to the Nvidia website and downloaded version 61.77. Now what as it is just sitting on My Desktop. Thanks in advance for any help.