Microsoft presents Release Candidate 2 of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP

Microsoft is putting the finishing touches to Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. Last December, the first Release Candidate (RC) of SP3 was made available for public download; now, Microsoft has released a second RC. Versions of XP that have this update report for work as "Service Pack 3, v.3300" with build number "2600.xpsp.080125-2028".

Unlike RC1, RC2 is not yet available to the general public for download, but only to a small group of registered beta testers. It is not yet clear whether Microsoft will ever make RC2 available to a larger group of testers.

SP3 upgrades all 32-bit versions of Windows XP, provided that at least Service Pack 1 has been installed. In doing so, it differs from all previous service packs: up to now, all of Microsoft's service packs have been cumulative, meaning that they contained all patches and updates of previous versions. In contrast, SP3 for XP only contains the patches and updates that have appeared since SP1. RC2 also contains a number of add-ons available separately, such as Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) 2.5, Windows Installer 3.1, Management Console (MMC) 3.0 and Core XML Services 6.0.

The final version of SP3 is expected sometime in the first two quarters of 2008, by which Microsoft usually means the second quarter, not the first. SP3 will be the last service pack for XP. However, patches for security problems that Microsoft categorises as critical will continue to be available for free until at least 2014.

(ehe)