Great news for beta testers, Windowsbeta has just put Windows XP SP2 final for beta testers to download. The final build number is 2180 with digital signature, here is a screenshot of the build on WindowsBeta. Update: Windows XP SP2 ships to manufacturing.
Windows XP SP2 Released On WindowsBeta, Final Build 2180
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Oh wow, a screenshot of a webpage containing a link to a beta of a service pack. What a way to spend my friday…
Mike – had you scrolled down the page a tad, you would have observed a perfectly functional torrent for the service pack (which was posted about one hour after the article itself, and some time before you made your post here
.
Despite the perils of downloading such things from untrusted sources I’ll reprint it here to save some other readers the necessary click-through:
http://home.comcast.net/~aiyengar/xpsp2.torrent
Now, if I could just find a bit of spare time to give the thing a thorough testing
I think it’s the final sp2 build…the code is ready but i guess microsoft didn’t anounce it yet cuz they are not ready…
I got the bit torrent version and it installed pretty easily. It took a long time, though, at least 20 minutes. Also, the progress bar was a bit inaccurate; it went into post install tasks and then cleanup before it hit 50% and then suddenly lept to about 75% in a few seconds.
Not much has changed except for the security updates and the relatively minor enhancements that we’ve been reading about. The progress bar on the blackish startup screen seems to have been changed from green to blue for some reason. My third party software seems to be working fine, too.
It will be out when it’s out. Whats the big rush to get it anyway?
I think you’d have to be mad to download software like this from anywhere but it’s official location, and I’ll wait until all the problems with the official release have been found before I install it on anything I care about thank you very much.
>> PingoJuice: I think you’d have to be mad to download software like this from anywhere but it’s official location, and I’ll wait until all the problems with the official release have been found before I install it on anything I care about thank you very much.
1. It’s perfectly fine to get the file from a nonofficial location, but you have to know what you are doing. And of course you don’t roll out a corporate network based on it. There are those of us at home who like to get it and play with it, and share our experiences.
2. Who do you think does all the testing, fills the help lines, and reports the bugs – people like you who will just wait until most of the work has been done? I’m not saying that everyone needs to upgrade right after it is released, but insulting those who do is just plain stupid.
But you have every right to complain like this – after you find a message board where people are demanding that you personally must upgrade to the latest version as soon as it comes out. 😉
Downloading it as we speak.
Well i’ve downloaded and tested the Service Pack (the official one off WinBeta). So far so good. Good points:-
1. IE has a popup blocker that works.
2. You can turn flash off on IE. YAY no more crappy web sites.
3. No apps other than windows components can access the internet by default.
4. Security is more “hand-holdy”. This is good for us sysadmins who have a lot of moronic users to look after.
5. It worked.
Besides all the obvious jokes, examples, common sense and all, XP SP2 was intended not as GUI update or as new applications deployer, but as a major security update to OS (however, you will be probably able to find new config checkboxes somewhere that are associated to the new features).
The windows security Center, probably the only major visible feature shows this focus on security … Under-the-hood features includes the last N+1 pacthes/updates from WinUpdate, the NX- execution bit for supporting architectures, an enhanced firewall, better restrictions on ActiveX execution, etc …
Is to get excited all that? <whishful thinking>maybe, if finally the nail major security flaws</whishful thinking>
Major security flaws are people who think they can manage Windows for themselves and their surrounding, but at the same time have their father, mother, sister, brother and Grandpa computers infected with the worm that uses exploit patched two months ago.
PingoJuice, MS have also provided an MD5 checksum so you can check it if you have got hold of the install file from somewhere else. If the generated MD5 doesn’t match Microsoft’s then don’t install.
Simple.