UPDATE: Microsoft issues long-awaited Windows XP Service Pack 2

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Posted on 9 Aug 2004 at 17:05

Microsoft's Service Pack 2 for Windows XP has been released to manufacturing, according to the company.

The update - as much as a massive 80MB - has now been finalised and the 'gold code' is being pressed onto CDs and distributed to computer makers so they can preload it on their products.

Because of the massive 100mn users expected to download the update and the hefty weight of the code itself, Redmond has employed a complex strategy for distribution.

Paul Randall, product manager in the UK for the Service Pack told us that from today SP2 will be available to MSDN subscribers from the MSDN Download Center and for those that have the autoupdate mechanism turned on and have already installed pre-release candidate versions.

Next week anyone with autoupdate turned on 'may' get it. 'We'll start from a relatively small base and gradually increase the amount of people each day that receive it. We're expecting to reach 100mn by the end of August,' he said.

'Because autoupdate is a kind of push technology, that means we can throttle the distribution and initially restrict it to quite small numbers. We want to minimise any spike on our servers.'

Towards the end of the month, the download will be available on the windowsupdate site, so that those with autoupate turned off can go direct to Microsoft for the patch.

It will also be available by ordering a free CD from Microsoft, through 'extensive' covermounts and with 'some retail availability' - stores that have a service desk, such as PC World, may update PCs for customers or offer CDs.

SP2 will be covermounted on the November issues of Computer Buyer, Computer Shopper and PC Pro and on issue 3 of PC Projects - so subscribers can save themselves both time and bandwidth by installing straight from the CD.

But Randall said that an online distribution was the 'preferred' method - even for the 70 per cent or so dial-up users in the UK. He said that the download technology is 'bandwidth intelligent' and that it will scale back when bandwidth is scarce or used elsewhere such as general surfing and email use.

And even when the connection is stopped, the software can set a checkpoint and pick up where it left off once the connection is re-established.

Furthermore, the updating software will analyse your system and only download the components of SP2 that are needed. So the actual size of the download should often be below the 80MB maximum.

A Microsoft spokesperson told us that the service pack would be rolled out on a language basis, too, with English being the first of 25. Gaelic computer users may be looking at the wrong end of September, then.

Microsoft is urging Windows users to enable the automatic update feature of the operating system, at least until the service pack is deployed. The company has even made a tool available for consumers that will do this for them at microsoft.com/protect.

The company says it expects business users to be already evaluating the service pack for a timely rollout, starting with notebooks and the computers of remote workers.

Randall said Microsoft has made a number of testing and evaluation tools available to allow them to do so, with utilities such as the ability to download the service pack into a quarantined environment before rolling it out network wide.

However, he said that service pack 2 has undergone incredible amounts of testing. 'In fact more customers tested SP2 than any other product,' he said. 'More than a million have helped us test and provided feedback for the update.'