I've just installed Windows 2000 Pro. Which service pack should I install? On download.net some people give them a real slating so I'm left wondering what is the right thing to do.

hi, well you will get diffent responses from diffrent people,some say service packs are good some say they are crap.i had sp4 thought it was great but turns out it sucked.i went back to sp3 and everything seems to be smooth.you can try sp3 then always upgrade to sp4.i think you might have to try them out for yourself.sp4 i had problems with yahoo for some odd reason.i went back to sp3 and everything fixed itself. but get others opinions before you decide.also look in old posts.just type in service packs and see what comes up. goodluck keltik

I've installed the packs as they became available with no side effects until SP4 when the IE became corrupted. I downloaded SlimBrowser from download.net and was rather suprised at it's superior qualities compared to IE. In the meantime I repaired IE following a suggestion from one of the websites and everything is working well. I presume that SP4 would have most of the features in the other packs. It is supposed to have the security features that the others don't have.

SP3 is safe. Go to SP4 if you're feeling adventurous. - mako

to make your choice more difficult (sorry); I would go for Sp4... because for me it was the other way around; SP4 fixed a few things that SP3 f---ed up on my machine (wmp, and IE for instance)

I agree with Patrick; SP4 solved a few problems that older patches screwed up.

My own experience is that all the service packs are fine as long as they are installed at the same time windows is installed. I've never had a problem doing it this way, and I do a lot of installs. Applying service packs to an existing installation is kind of a crap shoot. I've yet to install one this way and have everything still work right. One thing I strongly suggest though; service packs 3 and 4 enable automatic updates. The first thing you should do is DISABLE this service. Using Automatic Updates is one of the most effective ways I know of to break your machine. Until MS puts some effort into quality control, users should never use this "feature".