04/21/2008, 8:10pm, EDT
Monday, April 21stWindows XP SP3 available April 29th
Microsoft has announced that Windows XP SP3 has been released to manufacturing and will be released for download on April 29th as a standalone installer. It will be available in early Summer as an automatic update. Windows XP SP3 includes all previously released Windows XP updates, including security updates and hotfixes, and select out-of-band releases. Microsoft says it's not adding significant Windows Vista functionality to Windows XP through SP3. However, SP3 does include Network Access Protection (NAP) to" help organizations that use Windows XP to take advantage of new features in the Windows Server 2008 operating system."
Further, Windows XP SP3 does not include Windows Internet Explorer 7. The service pack does, however, include functionality previously released as updates, such as the Microsof Management Console (MMC) 3.0 and the Microsoft Core XML Services 6.0 (MSXML6). Users can download these updates and apply them individually to computers running Windows XP SP2. Windows XP SP3 also includes a small list of previously unavailable functionality, including NAP and an update of Windows Product Activation.
Windows XP SP3 also includes improvements to black hole router detection (detecting routers that are silently discarding packets), turning it on by default. In addition, the Security Options control panel in Windows XP SP3 now has more descriptive text to explain settings and prevent incorrect settings configuration.
Filed under: security, software
Other story tags: Microsoft, Vista, Windows, update, network
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It was Service Pack 3 in Beta. XP remains the "real thing" as far as Windoze users are concerned. The "work in progress" continues.
Would someone slay this 9 headed snake already!
However, all that aside, if SP3 stops svchost on my Workstation here at work from grabbing 1GB of VM with only five days of uptime, then I'll be happy.
Sorry, but last night when I saw this, it was hosted on macnn (the article itself, not just the initial link). Must've been moved. (wow, who knew I had that kind of power. Maybe if I mentioned to these people another time to fix their freakin' cross-posting bug on their pages, they'll get that fixed too!).
The good thing about it. It's just a group collection of existing bug fixes, plus some other non-released ones (well, not released in the wild, but probably released to a few important customers who had issues). Sort of like how a 10.5.3 combo release would have all the bug fixes from 10.5.1 and 10.5.2, plus security patches released in that time (which, BTW, apple also gloms into one large release, rather then individual fixes).
However, if you've already installed all previous patches, why does someone need to download the entire set again, just to get a few other fixes????