Submitted by Microsoft has posted the release candidate of Windows XP Service Pack 3 to its download site. The move marks the first opportunity for all users of the six-year-old operating system to try out its final upgrade. Previously, several thousand users were given access to test builds of SP3 only by Microsoft’s invitation. Update: I just installed the RC on my Windows XP MCE installation, and it all went fairly painless. I haven’t noticed anything radically different either yet.
Well, like or need Windows or not, it is obviously clear for me that given the Vista “failure”, Windows XP needed a revamp. It is a pain to install a new system with Windows XP and have to download lots and lots of upgrades to the system. This SP3 can help with that, and I like that Microsoft makes it public.
“Windows XP needed a revamp.”
This wasn’t a revamp, and certainly not as large as SP2 for XP was. Besides, MS has made it very clear for a while now that XP SP3 would ship at the same time as Vista SP1.
Agreed that it’s a good move on MS’s part to make the RC’s public though. Everyone wins.
I’ll be impressed if Vista SP1 needs only 50% more RAM than XP SP3.
“I’ll be impressed if Vista SP1 needs only 50% more RAM than XP SP3.”
RAM pressure in Vista is caused by Super Fetch; I thought everyone knew that by now. Turning off the SuperFetch service will free up memory if you want to reclaim it though…however that’s wasted memory that could be better used prefetching pages that the OS has determined it will need.
People seem to get up in arms if they don’t have at least 50% of their memory free at any given time..
What’s funny is that I am one of those people, however after giving super fetch an honest shot, I definitely appreciate the added performance.
Thanks for the tip. Honestly didn’t know that before.
I’ve been running SP3 for a while now and I recently noticed this: I can’t put the IE icon on the desktop anymore. You know the one without the shortcut arrow. I go to display properties, then to customize desktop and see that the option to display the IE icon is gone. I only get ‘my documents,’ ‘my computer,’ and ‘my network places.’
Does anybody else have this problem? I don’t know if SP3 made this change or if it was slipped into some update. Documentation says nothing about this.
“I’ve been running SP3 for a while now and I recently noticed this: I can’t put the IE icon on the desktop anymore. You know the one without the shortcut arrow.”
Does anybody else have this problem?
How in the world is this a problem for you? The regular shortcut works just fine.
IMO, this is exactly the way it should be. IE is just an another application like say, Firefox. It is not a system component even though Microsoft has been trying hard to convince people otherwise.
Exactly. IE is a program like any other. It’s an executable. The idea of “special” shortcuts that don’t show you what they link to and only the system understands is just dumb. Microsoft likes to do this for Office too. Microsoft Word isn’t a magical system call, it’s a program dammit.
So is Windows Explorer (the file manager, not the browser).
This is the way it should have been, from the beginning. Just create a shortcut to C:Program FilesInternet Explorer/iexplore.exe on the desktop named “Internet Explorer, and boom–done. If you want to get rid of the shortcut icon (the arrow), go get TweakUI and find the checkbox that removes the little arrow from shortcut files. This is just another of a long list of changes that should have been done long ago.
well, the real problem is having the IE icon at all
http://www.getfirefox.com or http://www.opera.com if you know what i mean.
This proves that even being the most hated company all around the world, and despite being accused of forcing you to upgrade to recent product versions, Microsoft can achive to give support for more than six years to a product, and that’s a lot of time indeed. No intend to attack free software at all, but I lack this kind of “easy” support over time in some GNU/Linux distributions.
” Microsoft can achive to give support for more than six years to a product, and that’s a lot of time indeed.”
You turn a necessity in to a feature. Oh well, I rather have a new release every two years then six years of support for old code.
New releases are more traumatic that upgrades. I’m okay with a company releasing new versions, but I appreciate them too for upgrading old ones. After all, if an old software is working, security fixes are enough for me. I have no need to install a new version, besides, the old hardware might cease working.
Just do it like this:
If you want a long supported OS use CentOS. 5 years is a long time in IT. Most computers need some sort of reinstall within 5 years anyways. Those would be the times to update to a newer CentOS release.
I dont think there is anything traumatic about doing it this way
BTW: Are there distros with longer support than 5 years?
BTW: Are there distros with longer support than 5 years?
According to Sun:
“Each Solaris release ships for 5 years and is supported at full support for additional 2 years followed by 3 years at limited support.”
I don’t know if Solaris counts as a “distro” in your mind, but it is supported for more than 5 years.
I’m sure the other enterprise-level OS players, such as IBM, have similar support.
Yes, Red Hat support RHEL for seven years.
Most computers need some sort of reinstall within 5 years anyways
Not in any enterprise of good size. We just spent the last 18 months forcing people to get off of Windows NT and Solaris 2.6, both of which are well over 10 year old OSes. I think we had over 5000 NT servers and over 2000 Solaris 2.6.
“””
“””
Yes: CentOS. It is supported for 7 years.
New software != Better in all cases. Vista being the glaring example. I’d rather have a patched XP Pro that’s nice and fast than Vista.
Linux example would be SuSe 10.2. 10.2 is inferior to 10.1, and it was until 10.3 that new releases of SuSe became usable again (in my opinion).
“You turn a necessity in to a feature. Oh well, I rather have a new release every two years then six years of support for old code.”
How about both? Apple releases a new OS upgrade every 2 years or so, but also has a policy of only supporting the most recent two upgrades at any given time. I don’t like it that my OSX Panther installation was officially EOL’ed with the release of OSX Leopard, making that just 4 years of support. So I get no more security updates or bug fixes unless I pay to upgrade. Well, that’s better than Apple’s support of Jaguar, which was only 2.5 years. Meanwhile, Microsoft will be supporting XP thru 2014. That’s 13 years of support.
Edited 2007-12-20 16:36
“Oh well, I rather have a new release every two years then six years of support for old code.”
You might, but that’s a nightmare for businesses from both a financial perspective and a support standpoint.
Maybe it shows that MS couldn’t bring out another OS that people wanted after six years – so were forced to support it. Just a thought…
I think that your opinion may be right or may be wrong, but you can’t deny that a SP3 is good for the Windows XP installed base and for the new installs that don’t choose Vista and stay with Windows XP by now.
The skills of Microsoft developing an OS in six years is off-topic in my opinion. Besides you can’t forget that Windows 2003, 2003 R2 and 2008 were developed at the same time that Windows Vista (apart from other applications outside the OS camp), so your comment may be not as accurate as you thought it to be.
“Besides you can’t forget that Windows 2003, 2003 R2 and 2008 were developed at the same time that Windows Vista”
Windows 2008 isn’t out yet. Windows 2003 is not much more than Windows XP compiled for servers with Active Directory on top. And Windows 2003 R2 _is_ Windows 2003 SP1 with an extra CD with some GUI tools.
Windows Vista is actually something new, and that something new took them six years to develop.
Returning to the original subject, it is easy to support an OS for more than six years, especially when that OS is the most current version for most of that time.
Which is quite understandable as supporting older versions takes more work. That’s why you won’t find it in the distros that don’t have enough corporate backing or developers.
Microsoft has enough resources to keep support going for their older versions, something some paying customers also demand.
This proves that even being the most hated company all around the world,
Actually, they’re only “hated” by Linux and Mac fanbois.
Hardly a noticeable slice of the world population. They’re probably “loved” by millions more, whom have made their living (and increased their wealth) with Microsoft.
No, they are probably hated by millions around the world with all the lost data that people have suffered with their insecure products.
They are also seen as a greedy American Corporation by the governments and the people of countless countries around the world.
And their shill supporters like you, are also seen as money greedy scumbags, as indeed your last post let us all see…
Gee, unbelievable what the Microsoft fanboys will come up with.
Microsoft has nothing, absolutely nothing going for it right now.
Vista is a failure, Windows 7 is years away, and XP is a patchwork no longer attractive to users who are getting really bored with this old OS.
Mac sale are up, Linux is making inroads to both server and desktop, and so Microsoft will do anything to keep people hooked on its junk.
If Vista was better received by the market, you can bet Microsoft would not release SP3 for XP.
“You turn a necessity in to a feature. Oh well, I rather have a new release every two years then six years of support for old code.”
Every 2 years? Thats insane. If you look at the companies that have released a new OS VERY often, such as a new Linux distro and compare it to that of a company that releases a Quality product that is supported and perfected (By no means is XP perfect) over a 6 year period of time, Which is the more successful company?
Whenever I decide to install a new version of Linux, there is a newer version available before the instillation is complete. The mentality of “if it’s broke, lets just make a new one” is not quality control by any means. I think that is the BIGGEST problem with Linux. There are 40,000 people all working on their own version, and it creates chaos. The only thing that Microsoft has done differently is take those 40,000 people and put them in ONE company to work on ONE product. What do you get out of that? The most successful OS in the history of Computers.
I realize that I am exaggerating, and will be criticized for my view on this. Bottom line, I’m sure there are only a handful of people still using Fedora 4 six years after it’s creation, but there are MILLIONS of people using XP. I dont see the folks at Fedora releasing updates for a 6 year old OS. They’re working on version 9 now? or wait is it 10? ugh, I cant keep up.
BTW, I dont use Windows or Linux. I’m not bashing either OS. I like them both for what they can do for me as a Tech Director. I DO however respect Microsoft for giving me support for 6 years instead of trying to cover up a broken OS with ANOTHER broken OS. Wait, did I just say that? They released a broken OS to cover up 6 years of work? yea, they’re all idiots. Thats why I use a Mac!
Most successful != the best.
You know, it’s the old cathedral and bazaar thing. One flame, that bazaar is much more cooler, other – that carthedral is much more organised.
But, well, there is no evil magic, that makes Microsoft programmers less capable, then their open-source colleagues. Management does
.
And, making 40000 work on one product, as you say, will produse a horrible mess. Microsoft has many, very many projects, many APIs so it’s complexity, maybe, is not less then Linux world variety
.
While I do not agree with everything that you said, I agree that reinstalling your OS every N months just for the sake of doing it – like Ubuntu people do – is not exactly what I’d call reasonable.
I think that Linux distributions such as Debian, Gentoo and Arch nailed it down perfectly: you can have an always up to date installation without having to wreck your production environment completely and having to rebuild it from the ground up…
“I DO however respect Microsoft for giving me support for 6 years instead of trying to cover up a broken OS with ANOTHER broken OS.”
Wait… you mean, like what they’re doing with Vista? Seriously, what you describe them as *not* doing, sounds exactly like what they *are* doing: attempting to force Vista onto us and act like XP doesn’t even exist. Only, Vista has probably been in development for longer than six years, and STILL broken like hell. Plus, XP these days really is not too bad of an OS… at least you don’t need ridiculous amounts of processing power, RAM and hard drive space to run it, and are not forced into kernel-level mandatory DRM. Thankfully, Vista’s not flying off the shelves as much as Microsoft wanted, so XP gets more attention. Yay for us, who don’t want to “downgrade” our systems with the latest bloat-on-a-disc from Microsoft!
Wow, that one sentence caused me to completely bypass the very next/last one. Too bad there’s no edit button. Never mind the previous post.
lol if office’s had to completely upgrade every 2 years especially large corporations they would never use that product thats why microsoft understands
service packs are simple clean upgrades, that microsoft releases about every what… 2 years?
On the other hand if i have an office full of linux pc’s and im supposed to be reinstalling from old to new builds every 2 years … im not ready for that head ache
Red Hat = 7 years
Debian LTS = 7 years
(as someone else mentioned):
Solaris = 5 years
CentOS = 5 years
Sure there are distributions that turn a new version and cut off support on old ones every six months but I wouldn’t recommend one of those for a business.
“Debian LTS = 7 years ”
Never heard of that distro before, or that release
Edited 2007-12-20 16:02
Cmon! That’s just Ubuntu LTS.
My bad.. I thought debian had a long term support edition also but it seems it’s just the Ubuntu forks.
http://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/
only Stable and Testing editions under Debian along with the backports repositories.
(crap.. the LTS was why I was looking at Debian for future servers too.. oh well.. plenty of good stuff there still.. I think full system upgrades are still a single apt-get command against the new repositories but there I really have to do more reading to be sure)
“Cmon! That’s just Ubuntu LTS.”
That’s right, it’s JUST Ubuntu LTS. I like Ubuntu as a desktop, but I certainly think there are better choices at this point for the server. Debian Stable, RHEL, Suse, CentOS
Debian or Ubuntu it is irrelevant after…
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
or
update-manager -c -d
btw – that last command can be seen as going from Win98 > WinME > Win2000 > WinXP > Vista all in one go, you can of course stop at any release you like.
Debian Long Term Support.. from what I can tell, they do an unstable, a stable and an LTS which is the stable with backports of newer versions expected for seven years or so.
I could be wrong on that one as I’m quite happy with my current distro so I’ve not looked into all the details of debian.
There is no Debian LTS, there is just Debian. There is Ubuntu LTS, which is at this point Dapper Drake. I wouldn’t put any version of Ubuntu on the server yet. Debian Stable is what you put on a server if you like the Debian/Ubuntu way of doing things.
Solaris = 5 years
Nope, Sun promises to make each version of Solaris available for at least 5 years. Bug and security fixes continues for 5 years after they stop selling it. So that’s a total of at least 10 years.
why would it be a headache to upgrade.
If you have red hat or suse you use their “satellite” servers and just push out upgrades. If you need a new install use automated PXE servers and kickstart or autoyast. No different than SUS or windows deployment services. You can have a new OS installed in minutes. With no input from anyone. But this all involves forethought. Something that is a little waning in IT.
“why would it be a headache to upgrade.
If you have red hat or suse you use their “satellite” servers and just push out upgrades. If you need a new install use automated PXE servers and kickstart or autoyast. No different than SUS or windows deployment services. You can have a new OS installed in minutes. With no input from anyone. But this all involves forethought. Something that is a little waning in IT.”
Actually it is waning in management, which controls the budgets. They don’t like spending money on IT, and it generally takes a disaster for them to wake up and say “Okay, you can spend that $10K now, I guess backups might be important after all.” Let alone what you are proposing. I have proposed it many times here, including the business case and cost savings in the long run. The only question they even have is “Can you just re-install from CD? Yes? No need for this setup then.”
Doesn’t include Windows Genuine Advantage. Hope things will stay the same for the release.
Crap, I forgot that installing SP3 would mean no more hacked uxtheme.dll! agh!
From what I had read was that it (uxtheme.dll) wouldn’t need to be hacked anymore. On the other hand (If I’m wrong) I don’t think it will be that long before a hacked version comes out.
here is the SP3 theme patcher.— http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=16025
The SP3 version linked is 3264 and the latest uxtheme patch is for 3244. Thanks anyway.
I wont lie I’m not a MS fan, but I do support a lot of MS computers. Has anyone else noticed that to SP release after a version release always seems to make the OS run buggy and slower? I first noticed this after NT4, when 2000 came out the next SP for NT4 seemed to slow it down then thing started to crash. Same thing with 2000 when XP came out. It could be that the next version was that much better that it made its predecessor feel that way, not sure. Just thought I would ask if anyone else has noticed this and if there are checks for this kind of thing?
Prior to this release people who had access to the “XP3 very near RC” build reported the SP3 was significantly faster than SP2.
I did a google for “xp sp3 benchmarks” and here are the first 3 results.
Windows XP SP3 Yields Performance Gains (http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/11/windows-xp-sp3-yields-performa…)
Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmarking test (http://www.news.com/Windows-XP-outshines-Vista-in-benchmarking-test…)
Early Tests Say SP3 Speeds Windows XP (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,139911-c,xp/article.html)
So it seems that you have nothing to worry about and Microsoft should be commended.
Why not just perfect an OS or software for that matter, with patches and updates and stick with it. A good OS should last 10 or more years regardless of code, heck even an eternity if done properly. There should be no SP’s as they are today but a single smaller update that you get 4 times a year – so this way there would be no more patch Tuesday and 100+ downloads for a fresh install, maybe 10 max between updates. You can always install updates or extras with executables.
Everyone always wants new eye candy, toys etc.additions. I’m tired of seeing Office come out every 2-3 years, it’s still Office. Stupid to have an OS come out every 5 years – it’s still Windows – same holds true for Linux.
Sure as I said they can create add-ons or patches for the things they normally add with a complete overhaul. They could have simply taken XP and given it the Vista look etc. without changing much. Linux constantly updates its kernel – Windows could do the same.
As another example just to show what a joke things are in the state of software – (Slysoft puts out a new version of it’s AnyDVD practically every day). Then you have software companies that put out it’s program every year only to be able to charge you again for a newer version.
Apple at least does one thing right by bringing out an update to it’s OS and charges a smaller fee with like 5 licenses or something, which almost equates to a new OS, whereas MS goes for the throat and gives you one license for that old arm and leg.
On another note I’d rather see the New Windows be a blank screen / no apps / no bloat (MinWin) as they say if they hold true to it and then everything else can be added FOR FREE as separate downloads. Who uses IE, who uses Media Player. Third parties obviously do these much better. I’d rather have a auto downloader or updater similar to Fedora Core or probably all Linux distros have? (I’ve only seen or used Fedora)and you simply check the boxes for what you want and before you know it system patched or updated with the latest and greatest ale cart… Personally I wouldn’t care if Windows was just a Command prompt as long as it plays games to it’s fullest, and you can call on any executable to bring up what you need without any overhead – who needs shortcuts or a background or cute little icons in the taskbar? Resources??? Where’s my floppy so I can edit my Autoexec.bat and Config.sys all over again…LOL
Edited 2007-12-20 17:29
So what’s in XP SP3 in a nutshell ?
Security updates? speed improvement ?
Does it have the new RDP 6 client ?
it is pretty much a maintenance release and a patch rollup, but apparently there is a 10% performance boost from things they have changed
What he said. If you keep your system up to date as you should then SP3 really is nothing except the so called performance boot and a few other items not yet mentioned as additions. The performance boost probably is nothing more than a few registry tweaks.
This SP will be nothing like SP2 was it’s more or less a rollup as mentioned but yes it should have RDP 6 Client but if you use Windows Update now you’ll get that and all the other updates that will be included in one download versus the 100+ that have been released since SP2… Of course this will just make it easier to SLIPSTREAM into your SP2 and then have a single install and already be up to date without having to sit on Windows Update for over an hour…
Edited 2007-12-20 19:29
The link in the article just takes you to MS’s Download Center, and their search is useless. If it’s available, they don’t make it easy to find.
EDIT
Apparently Google’s search is more efficient than Microsoft’s, even for their own site.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=75ed934c-8…
Edited 2007-12-20 19:58
The link in the article just takes you to MS’s Download Center, and their search is useless. If it’s available, they don’t make it easy to find.
What? The link takes me to the download page, I click the “Download” button, and I download SP3.
That was hard.
The link in THE ARTICLE as I had said in the first place leads to the Download Center, not the direct link. I mistakenly assumed the link in the OSNews header was the same.
No need to be snotty about it.
Pot, meet kettle.
Your post implied that MS makes it very hard to find the SP3 download — which is NOT a released SP yet, so it makes sense that the download center wouldn’t list it.
So it’s not MS’s fault — this is by design, so that the masses don’t download SP3 … yet.
Pinhead.
“Microsoft Lets Everyone Try Windows XP SP3”
That’s the most positive spin of pushing your beta testing onto the unsuspecting public .. much like Vista is not out of bete yet (hi Thom!)
Does anyone know if SP3 will break any Windows apps ?
If so, what are the broken apps ?
My vmware server host started disconnecting its shares after sp3 was installed, only happens under load, but sp3 did make network shares reconnect… I have not installed sp3 on the clients yet, just the server to test, and only issue I seen so far. I didnt notice any vmware speed increases.
I know some didn’t understand when I put the earlier link which was only up to 3244. The reason I had linked there was because that is the site where the fresh builds are posted,and that new builds of XP3 will usually be followed in a week by a new build of the uxtheme.dll patcher. Well, the wait is over,and the new theme patch for XP3 RC1 is out,so here you go and Happy Holidays!
http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=16025