14 DAY TRIAL // The recent testing release of Windows XP SP3 that Microsoft has made available to a select pool of testers was leaked to torrent trackers as of August 8, and is available for download. And all it took was just one little crack in Sinofsky's Windows Omerta wall (Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group). Under Sinofsky, access to upcoming Windows releases, as well as information on forthcoming products associated with the platform have been drastically limited. At the time of this article, there were several websites offering the same download claiming to be the official test version of Windows XP SP3 that Microsoft has dropped in the lap of testers in July concomitantly with the availability of the pre-beta release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1.
All the torrents were just a few hours old and contain information designed to recommend them as the official test version of Microsoft's Windows XP SP3. One such example of data is the build number. The version leaked to the torrent trackers claims to be Build 3180. If this is indeed the case, then the torrent confirms the previously available screenshots of the third service pack for the operating system. The download for Windows XP SP3 also provides the full build tag which is: 5.1.2600.3180 (xpsp.070718-2058)?another detail that seems to point to the fact that the torrent will offer the genuine XP SP3 test build. Additionally, the download weighs in at 339.6 Mb and is an .EXE file.
The person that leaked the Windows XP SP3 test version even offered a message to Sinofsky: "This is the Windows XP Service Pack 3 Build 3180. Think of it more as a pre-beta build of SP3 than an actual beta build. Let this be a lesson to Steven Sinofsky that being secretive is NOT always the best way to do things."
Now, the fact of the matter is that torrent trackers are virtually saturated with downloads claiming to be Windows XP Service Pack 3. Some of them are even a few years old, and probably contain more malware than Windows source code. Obviously, you will not get a download link from Softpedia. Furthermore you should take all downloads claiming to be XP SP3 with a grain of salt, grind your teeth and wait for the final and official release from Microsoft. Chances are it will drop by the end of 2007, or in the first half of 2008. Unlike the version leaked to the torrent trackers, the genuine Windows XP SP3 will not expose you to any risks.