Windows XP Service Pack 2 free on CD

[PoloMint]

Many people don’t seem to realise that MS are giving SP2 away so if you have a dial up or metered broadband then this might be useful.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/sp2/cdorder/en_us/default.mspx

It means giving MS your address (or getting it sent to your work etc ;) ) and says it could take a month to arrive (but I think the SP1 ones didn’t take nearly that long despite saying they could)

 

[AForester]

Hi

According to the "Windows XP UK home" site

You can collect a CD free from PC World outlet from 3 September 2004.

Regards AF

 

[BGonaSTICK]

Errr, is no-one here running with a 'genned' product ID?!?!?!

 

[PoloMint]

Microsoft clears up confusion regarding illegal PIDs in XP SP2

Reported by Aaron on 07 Aug 2004 - 01:55 CET | There are 4 comments for this story. Previous Post | Frontpage | Next Post

Many users have questioned why illegal PIDs are being allowed on a Windows XP SP2 installation when they were blocked in previous betas. This is due to Microsoft's new approach on security in Service Pack 2 to prevent any further Windows XP machines from getting infected with viruses and malicious attacks. Microsoft's Gary Schare answers:

"There have been a number of discussions on this newsgroup regarding whether SP2 will install on non-genuine (aka "pirated") versions of Windows. Here is the official Microsoft position on this topic:

We expect that nearly all Windows XP users, running genuine or pirated Windows, will have access to the security technologies in SP2. The same users that were blocked from installing SP1 - those that have used a small set of legacy pirated product keys - will be blocked from installing SP2. We believe that there are very few systems in use today that use these keys -- in other words, the pirates have moved on to other keys which we are not blocking.

So how do we charaterize our policy?

We want to make sure that the broadest number of people can install SP2. The nature of malicious attacks on computer users is constantly changing and we will continue to evaluate how we deal with security updates for pirated versions of Windows to best protect our genuine Windows customers.

Thanks,

Gary Schare
Microsoft

From http://www.msfn.org/

I have read many reports of people installing SP2 who thought they would have problems finding that it installed just fine, as long as you have a corporate key it seems it is OK

 

[BGonaSTICK]

Cheers, that's very interesting, but do you know of anyone who can subsequently use Windows Update 5 client? Based on the above, it looks very promising... the beta's definitely blocked it. Little point installling SP2 if there's no WU.

If I can get some +ve feedback, then it might be interesting to run an isolated box up against it to see what happens.