It's that most magic of Microsoft moments again - another Service Pack's been released. After hearing all the horror stories about SP1, it's understandable to be reluctant to go for SP2. On all machines tested, odd things did  happen, but they were all fixable with a little hunting on Google. Fixing the missing volume control in systray proved the least scary, though it was the most time consuming.

Depending on how you installed XP Pro, the needful files might be in many places, but they have the same names no matter where you find them. They need to be placed in your System32 folder. Repeated attempts to get the Help files (.chm and .hlp) to work never succeeded, but they were emplaced anyway. The three files are:

• SNDVOL32.CH_
• SNDVOL32.EX_
• SNDVOL32.HL_

The machines we tested on all had an OPTIONS file inside of Windows. The files were located in the i386 folder. In theory, your XP Pro installer CD should have them in a similar place also. They might be in lowercase, or even have the extensions finished (SNDVOL32.CHM, SNDVOL32.EXE, SNDVOL32.HLP). Copy the files into SYSTEM32, finish the extensions (SNDVOL32.CHM, SNDVOL32.EXE, SNDVOL32.HLP) if needed, then double click the SNDVOL32.EXE file.

The next thing to restoring volume control to systray is to go into Control Panel, Sounds And Audio Devices, and place a checkmark in the appropriate box. There should now be a volume control in your systray once again. Why SP2 kills it isn't known, but it did on all machines tested.

The other thing SP2 broke in tests was Windows Media Player. It broke in different ways on different machines, but one of two fixes corrected it. The easiest one was when the installer came online (instead of Media Player). The tester just clicked through as if Media Player had never been installed before. Media Player performed correctly on this machine. The other machines this did not work  with at all. Error messages were unique and inconsistent.

After much surfing to find a fix, the ultimate fix was tried, System Restore. A date prior to the SP2 installation was chosen. It did work, though the installer came online the first time trying to use Media Player after the restore. Clicking through the screens fixed Media Player. No other problems were noticed, though one of the machines caught a hideous .exe virus shortly thereafter.

Because of all the world-class protection tied up in SP2, it really is recommended to bite the bullet and install it, but be on guard as it will  break things. Ensure you have recent backups, and know where all your installers (and serials) are.