14 DAY TRIAL // The release of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP was a watershed moment in the evolution of Windows Vista’s predecessor, with the upgrade catapulting the operating system at the top of the OS market, and keeping it there for the next seven years. XP SP2’s 7th anniversary comes just a day after Windows XP turned 10, as Softpedia readers were able to find out via an article published yesterday.
10 years after XP was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and seven years after SP2 launched, the decade old platform continues to run on the vast majority of Windows computers worldwide, although Windows 7 is threatening its dominance.
Make no mistake about it, SP2 is in fact the reason why so many have stuck with XP this long, and not XP itself. I highly doubt it that any of the current users still clinging to XP would continue doing so if all they had was XP SP1 or worse yet, XP RTM.
There hasn’t been another service pack release for Windows matching the complexity of XP SP2 since August 25th, 2004 when the upgrade was launched.
Microsoft stressed time and again that due to the size of the investment and the evolution it introduced, Windows XP SP2 felt less like a service pack and more like an entire new release of Windows.
In order to build the upgrade, the Redmond company sacrificed the Longhorn project, by reallocating resources to introduce technologies such as BlueTooth, WPA encryption, Wi-Fi, Data Execution Prevention (DEP), a revamped Windows Firewall, etc. to Windows XP.
Most importantly XP SP2 was the first software release from Microsoft to go through the Trustworthy Computing initiative, delivering an enhanced level of security, and setting the tone for the company’s future focus on boosting user protection from one Windows release to the next.
SP3 is the only service pack that followed SP2, and the last upgrade for Windows XP.
Windows XP Service Pack 3 stand-alone version is available for download here.
Windows XP Service Pack 3 Checked Build Network Installation Package is available for download here.
Windows XP Service Pack 3 CD Image is available for download here.