Whereas the release of the Service Pack 3 for Windows XP was scheduled for Tuesday, April 29, 2008, it is still not available for public download at the date we are writing this article. In fact, a very serious issue which may lead to a definitive loss of data has been discovered in this update. The problem seems to occur when the Service Pack is installed on a computer where « Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management » application is already present. As a consequence, Microsoft has postponed the release of this Service Pack to a currently unknown date. Moreover, this issue also impacts the Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, published last month and still available for download on Microsoft websites.

Windows XP SP3 includes all the updates previously released for this operations system, in particular all the security updates and the hotfixes published since the release of Windows XP SP2 in August 2004.

Services Packs are cumulative, which means that the bugs solved in a Service Pack are also fixed in the following Service Packs. For instance, the SP3 for Windows XP includes all the patches contained in Windows XP SP2. It is thus not necessary, theoretically (history showed some interesting regression cases), to install the first Service Pack before installing the SP3 for Windows XP.

Windows XP SP3 also brings new features, presented below. It is worth mentioning that is does not include Internet Explorer 7.

The following new features, that were already available as updates for Windows XP, are included by default in the SP3:

• MMC 3.0 (Microsoft Management Console) environment allowing to unify system management tasks
• MSXML6 (Microsoft Core XML Services) software providing better conformance with W3C XML 1.0 and XML Schema 1.0 recommendations
• new version of Windows Installer (version 3.1 v2)
• BITS 2.5 (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) data transfer tool
• IPSec update (Simple Policy Update)
• DIMS (Digital Management Service) tool allowing to simplify key and certificate management
• version 2.1 of the PNRP (Peer Name Resolution Protocol) software allowing Windows XP SP3 programs to communicate with Windows Vista programs
• support for WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) allowing to support new standards derived from the IEEE 802.11i standard

The following features represent the more significant changes of Windows XP SP3:

• "Black Hole" router detection (routers that silently discard packets)
• NAP (Network Access Protection) policy included in Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows XP SP3, aiming at checking the security level of a system before allowing its access to the network
• addition of a description explaining the security settings and configuration
• enhanced security for the "System Center Essentials" tool
• addition of the "Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic" module, FIPS 140-1 Level 1 compliant
  
• possibility to install Windows XP SP3 operating system without providing a product key