Using Windows Update, I installed XP SP2, and now am having a minor
problem.

Before the upgrade, in the system tray at bottom right, the icon for a
hard wired ethernet connection was an icon with two minature computer
terminal screens, which would alternately blink when data was being
received and sent. Thus you could tell the data direction and in
fact, if anything was being sent or received over the connection.
Also, before installing SP2, the same icon was used for wireless
connections, allowing you to monitor data transfer activity. This
type of icon has come in handy to help detect spyware activity when
there should be none.

Now, AFTER SP2, both the WIRED and the WIRELESS icons are the same,
simply showing a static terminal with a few radio waves eminating from
the terminal, and the display is static. That is, you cannot tell if
there is any activity on the connection or not, and the same WIRELESS
icon is used now for both the wireless and wired network ports.

Is there any way to fix this to where you can actually monitor the
port activity simply by looking at the icons?

Thanks,

Jim

Please disregard, the little icon does show activity without
direction.

Jim

Go figure, after installing SP2 and having the problem as described
above, after rebooting the computer several times the regular dual
terminal icon has returned for the hard wired connection and they are
now correct. That is, for the wireless connection you get the little
wireless icon and for the regular hard wired icon you now get the old
dual terminal icon. I guess when you install SP2 on XP it somehow
gets confused and you have to reboot the system two or thee times
before things get straightened out. System appears stable now.
BTW, XP Pro is on an IBM Thinkpad laptop and I tried installing SP2
when it fist came out and it crashed the laptop, had to use the
restore discs to start from scratch, thus my reluctance to install SP2
a second time.

On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 04:01:11 -0500, Jim <wdxp@cox.net> wrote:

>Please disregard, the little icon does show activity without
>direction.
>
>Jim