>The kids have a lot of music and pics on the pc, and I would be in mega trouble if anything happened to them!
Your PC or hard disk could crash at any time, even without a SP2 install ,so you should be backing up these pictures and music files anyway.
You should ALWAYS work on the principle, if this PC crashed or was stolen (or was flooded), what would we like to recover.
ANYTHING you want to recover should be backed up to CD or DVD (or as a minimum to an external hard disk)
The SP2 install COULD crash your system (it has happened to some people although I have not had any problems) so it is best to backup everything before doing an SP2 install.
This service pack replaces hundreds of Windows file and adds lots of new features and functions so it could leave your Windows unusable after install.
To be honest for security reasons you should ALREADY be on SP2, and downloading all the latest Windows updates.
By not doing so you have left you PC open to viruses, theft of personal files, and all sorts of other nasties.
This site explains why you should install it
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/why.msp x