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Don't forget that they will still be releasing patches after SP3!

Why on earth would you turn off automatic updates?

To avoid faulty updates that happen every few months. You can never be too sure when an Automatic Update will break something on your system. I like to make sure there are no reports of errors or hardware conflicts before downloading any new updates.

Most businesses follow the same policy. Test first, deploy later.

I would agree that Microsoft's sloppy management of Automatic Updates has given people reason to distrust it. On the other hand, if you distrust Automatic Updates across the board (without any specific basis, such as a known issue with a particular update), then it doesn't make sense that you would ever have it enabled. If you never turn it on, then there would not be any need to turn it off by any given date such as June 10.

A more likely scenario would be if you were tight on disk space and didn't want something as large as a service pack to be downloaded until you were ready, or if you had a specific application which had been tested with the SP3 beta and found to be incompatible so you wanted to defer the service pack until you could obtain an upgrade for the application. For scenarios like these, there is the Service Pack Blocker Tool Kit.

Good point. Somehow automatic updates got turned on on our Exchange server and it knocked the whole thing offline for the first part of the business day! ...it sucked.

They were originaly going to do the same with vista sp1 .....backtracked when there was lots of complaints about it

If I had to guess, I would say that it is probably just a CD version of the standalone SP3. This is obviously useful for those who are not on a broadband connection, as well as those who may want to distribute it to others who may not be aware of it. I imagine that many major electronics retailers will have plenty of these as well, much the same way that they did with SP2.

good question; i would of thought it would of been leaked by now

You just don't know where to look, my friend. Arrrr mateys

Aye, to be sure it has leaked. Just got it thanks to Rapidshare, now as soon as my new DVD-RW drive comes from Newegg I can set about slipstreaming and installing a nice fresh copy of XP on my system. About time too, I've had enough of Vista for one lifetime.

I don't think you're looking at it the same way Microsoft does. There is absolutely nothing stopping you or any VL customer from downloading SP3 from the public download site.

For a free, publicly-available download like SP3, the only reason it ever gets added to the Microsoft Select, MSDN, and TechNet download servers is just for the sake of keeping those sites' catalogs consistent with the contents of physical media which has been shipped. Microsoft's public download infrastructure simply has more bandwidth and scalability available than any other. The Select/TechNet/MSDN servers are intended for use with FTM, which incurs overhead due to authentication and encryption because the majority of downloads on these sites are not free and publicly available.

If Microsoft released SP3 first to Select/TechNet/MSDN, those servers would get slammed, which would: (1) slow the non-public downloads for subscribers who have no alternative site, and (2) realistically, result in slower downloads for SP3 than you would get from the public download servers.


No, it was their intention to force businesses to use XP when they completely cancelled SP5 for Windows 2000. However, the mere fact that they are releasing SP3 for Windows XP at all is proof that they support people who are continuing to use Windows XP. If your organization has a current EA, SA, or other MVLS agreement covering the desktop OS, then Microsoft's only obligation was to provide Vista, so you should be looking at XP SP3 as a free gift.

Let's be honest. You're really just upset because you feel insulted. You're not really looking at SP3's release from a logical/practical standpoint. You want to treat SP3 like a badge of honor, a sign of prestige. Your billion dollar company wasn't planning to deploy SP3 in production across the entire network next week. In fact, Microsoft's official stance has always been (and still is) that SP3 is due "in the first half of 2008" so if you were making plans at all, you shouldn't have been shooting for earlier than June 30.

Last edited by hosebeast on 22 Apr 2008 - 21:58

Well you are not talking like one right now. Be patient, it is not a race.

I'm getting an error message in the download manager as soon as it starts the transfer

Whilst that is the Direct link, you need to be logged into MSDN first.
Or it will not authenticate you.



quote=hentaiboy said,#11.1][quote=rbanksy said,#11]ATTENTION MSDN USERS:

I think this is the direct link ;-)

http://downloads.msdn.microsoft.com/downlo...fcd8b4c8ffd0723

I am downloading SP3 now.[/quote]

I'm getting an error message in the download manager as soon as it starts the transfer [/quote]

can you post the MD5 sum of the iso?

Thanks