XP Service Pack 3 Goes Live

Like busses you wait ages for a Windows Service Pack, then two come along at once. Hard on the heels of Vista SP1, which mostly went without a hitch, we can now look forward to XP Service Pack 3, the last for the operating system, which is now heading towards retirement, probably next year.

If you were around when MS unleashed SP2 you are forgiven for a brief shudder of trepidation, but I think this one should go quite smoothly. Unlike XP SP2, which re-wrote a lot of the operating system’s code, this one focuses on rolling up all previous security updates since the release of SP2, and a reported 1074 fixes and upgrades. Most of them are anonymous behind the scenes things that you’ll be happier not knowing about (because they are mostly deathly dull…), but there are a few interesting bits and bobs. One of them is a new Product Activation module, which allows users to install XP without having to enter an activation key, better network integration with Server 2008 and there’s a promise of improved performance with Microsoft Office. XP SP3 will be on your auto update list in the next few days or weeks but if you just can’t wait you can jump the queue and download it from Microsoft Update. Be warned, it’s a bit of a whopper at 428Mb, you need to have installed SP1 or SP2 before you can install SP3, and this is for the 32-bit version of XP only.