14 DAY TRIAL // After almost a year of uninterrupted and deafening silence, a member of the Microsoft Update team posted a new blog entry on the End of Support for Windows Vista RTM and Windows XP SP2. Microsoft’s advice? Upgrade to supported versions of the two operating systems, as fast as possible. The best way to do it, according to the Redmond company, is by leveraging the update infrastructure put in place by Microsoft, namely Windows Update and Automatic Updates. The software giant continues to offer both Service Pack 2 for Vista and SP3 for XP through WU and AU.
“Vista users should install Windows Vista SP1 & SP2 using Windows Update (WU). Windows XP customers should install Windows XP SP3 using Automatic Updates (AU) or the Microsoft Update site. You may need to install other available updates before a Service Pack is offered to you in WU or AU. Service Pack installation is always recommended through Windows Update, due to AU/WU’s ability to reduce the size of the download and manage the download process. Windows XP SP3 requires a 316mb download through the Microsoft Download Center and the typical download through AU/WU is ~70mb,” the MU team member stated.
Of course, Vista SP2 and XP SP3 also continue to be available for download and manual integration. Users will be able to find download links at the bottom of this article. Microsoft cut support for the RTM flavor of Vista on April 13th 2010. At this point in time Vista SP1 continues to be supported, but customers should better upgrade to SP2. As of July 13th Microsoft is also no longer offering support for XP SP2, and is urging customers to upgrade to SP3 as fast as possible.
“Service packs are important for many reasons. They are a rollup of previously released Windows updates, and they typically contain software improvements that aren’t released in a stand-alone update. Service Packs are a part of Microsoft’s support policy. When a new Windows Service Pack is released, Microsoft will provide 24 months of support for the previous service pack. When support ends, we typically do not release new updates for the unsupported platforms. This includes Security Updates,” the MU team representative added.
Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) Final is available for download here.
Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 - Five Language Standalone (KB948465) is available for download here.
Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 - Five Language Standalone for x64-based systems (KB948465) is available for download here.
Windows 7 RTM Enterprise 90-Day Evaluation is available for download here.
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