SP3 Sets New Windows XP Baseline

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), which is likely the last service pack that will be available for Windows XP, was released to manufacturing in Apr. 2008. Although many customers will not get access to the service pack until June, most customers will want to deploy this cumulative service pack to establish a new support baseline for computers running Windows XP SP2 or SP1. SP3 is also required for Windows XP to support Windows Server 2008 Network Access Protection (NAP), which inspects computers connecting to an organization’s network and blocks misconfigured or unsafe systems.

What’s Fixed?

Like most service packs, Windows XP SP3 is a collection of fixes for bugs and security vulnerabilities—in this case, those that were found and fixed since the release of Windows XP SP2 in Sept. 2004. The collection of more than 1,000 fixes includes 143 patches previously released as security updates on Patch Tuesdays between Aug. 2004 and Apr. 2008.

The remaining patches fix problems with features such as power management (the computer does not resume from hibernation or does not wake-on-LAN from standby) and the basic OS (for example, a user does not receive the “safe to remove hardware” message when he clicks the Safely Remove Hardware icon). In addition to the previously released security updates for discovered vulnerabilities, there are additional fixes for security operations, such as for computers that stop responding when using a smart card to log on.