Microsoft Delays Windows XP Service Pack 2

Rinisari writes "DesignTechnica, among some others , explains that Microsoft has once again delayed its release of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, though only until August. Microsoft has declined to comment on the reason for the delay. Windows Update v5, however, is online and operational (and works with Service Pack 1!), although not officially so. I know many smaller education institutions are chomping at the bit with the looming release, as they are worried about compatibility with some of the new features in Service Pack 2."

Comments

invalid product keys...

[garcia]

Speculation that warez'd copies would still be allowed to update via Windows update were at least partly wrong. You may still be able to manually update Windows with an "invalid" product key but you cannot do it via the v5 Windows Update interface.

[Error number: 0x80244028]
Cannot validate the product key
The product key used to install Microsoft Windows may not be valid. For more information about why you have received this error message, and steps you can take to resolve this issue, please visit How to Tell.

Re:invalid product keys...

[OverlordQ]

There's a bit more info with the first few links. Some speculation is that they're blacklisting all non-registered Corp keys, which is pretty much what all warez copies are of.

Re:invalid product keys...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, as of the latest SP2 build, all you need is a corporate key with a PID of 640. New key generators can give you perfect PID 640 keys instantly and several people now have SP2 running, including WindowsUpdate v5, on "warezed" copies of XP using these keys.

Though it should be simple enough for Microsoft to implement a blacklist of non-sold keys, all that would effect is WindowsUpdate. There are ways to disable product activation / authentication on the client side without ever touching a network connection.

What to do without WindowsUpdate? Why AutoPatcher of course.

Re:invalid product keys...

[duffhuff]

They are non-critical fixes for problems, or sometimes just addition programs / functionality.

Re:Windows Update v5?

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't work at all with anything other than IE, since it uses ActiveX apps to do all the checking of your machine.
It's the only thing I now need IE for.

Re:NT4 Service Packs

[Webmoth]

As to why they haven't released a SP7, read this.

Re:Why not release July Security Service Pack?

[stratjakt]

All the fixes for known worms/vulnerabilities are out the door on windows update. Go get 'em.

If you want to check out XP SP2 RC2...

[antdude]

Then, go to http://v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ (not v4). Just remember to make backup before you upgrade in case anything goes wrong!

Re:[ot] windows update, without IE?

[alerante]

Actually, there is a small tray icon that can be used to automatically download updates without using Internet Explorer, at least in XP. Go to Control Panel: System, and open the Automatic Updates tab. Then set the schedule to your own convenience.

Windows XP SP2 RC2 is buggy as heck!

[shakamojo]

I've been testing SP2 since RC1 and it's still pretty buggy... the new wireless features have issues with certain products from some major manufacturers, the added browser security has (in my case) created more problems than it solves, but the new firewall features and interface are VERY nice. I just hope they work the bugs out before release, as it stands now, it's no where near ready for release to the general public IMHO.

Re:[ot] windows update, without IE?

[Thng]

You may be thinking of the Microsoft baseline security analyzer. FWICT, it finds most (if not more) of the security updates on windows update (based on v4) and I added the "more" because it also scans other products, like MSSQL (v5 of windowsupdate seems to have some of this ability)

It is not quite like windows update, in that they will still need to download them, and would probably just confuse them.

If they're running windows 2k sp3(?) or higher, or Windows XP, just turn on Automatic updating, and choose either install updates automatically, or download updates automatically and prompt to install.

Hope this helps

Windows XP SP2 Technical Preview Newsgroups

[antdude]

See http://communities.microsoft.com/newsgroups/defaul t.asp?icp=xpsp2&slcid=us.

Re:Windows Update v5?

[phasedshadow]

This really isn't a troll/funny question, IMO, as I briefly wondered this myself. Version 4 of Windows Update explicitly locks out non-IE browsers with a message stating that IE is requried. Version 5, however, seems to load fine (albeit ugly), except for the fact it just displays a "Checking for the latest version of the Windows Update Software..." message and nothing else. It does not seem to actually say that ActiveX or IE is required. That being said, the answer is yes, it is still IE-only, since the software uses ActiveX.

Re:Recent Article In InfoWorld

[rritterson]

If the CIO is going to do a company-wide roll out of beta software and call it a "test", the CIO is already breaking the company.

The idea is, you build a small test lab, see what has changed and what won't work, then you create new group policy objects to handle it. You then disable the GPO until you create a new GPO that deploys SP2 to the machines. Both GPO's go live automatically, and you've covered your ass. Geez, maybe I should be CIO.

compatibility?

[BeatdownGeek]

I did quite a bit of testing on SP2 to verify that it works with our (fairly large) enterprise web app. The app uses ActiveX, offscreen pages, popups of all sorts, etc... The only thing that had to be changed for compatibility was the URL had to be added to the "trusted sites" zone. That's it. Not a whole lot of compatibility problems.

On the server side, it took about 5 minutes to configure the firewall to allow the web and/ or database server to listen for incoming connections. Again, not really a big deal.

I think the only place there will be compatibility problems is on the "install this great free adware/ dialer" pages. But then again, social engineering and uninformed users are the source of most of the problems anyway. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't really like MS either, but I think the compatibility fears with SP2 are somewhat overblown.

The SIZE of this thing

[SeriousEyePanda]

"Although the final size of Service Pack 2 is not set, the most recent beta was a beefy 264 Gbytes. Because of that size, the service pack will also be available as a free CD mailed to users who request it, Poole promised."

from InformationWeek

Need I say that's pretty beefy!