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NEWS FROM THE LAB - Thursday, August 11, 2011
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I Can Has Update Rollup 1 for Windows XP SP3? Posted by Sean @ 12:12 GMT

Hello Microsoft,

A partner of ours is feeling some pain. He's located in Central Europe and some of his customers have limited hardware budgets, and so… he ends up doing a lot of Windows XP SP3 installations. (Yes, we know, Windows 7 is cool, but the customer is always right, and you have to give them what they want.)

And here's where the pain comes in — Windows/Microsoft Updates.

There's a ton of post-SP3 updates and it takes a great deal of time to install them. It cuts into his productivity, i.e., his profit.

We checked one of our virtual machine test images and it has 157 post-SP3 updates installed, and that's a very base installation (calculator isn't even installed).

Review_your_update_history

Service Pack 3 for Windows XP was basically an "Update Rollup" and we understand that "SP4" is probably not an option (for marketing reasons)…

Windows_XP_software_updates

But perhaps you would consider doing an Update Rollup 1 for Windows XP SP3? It would be very helpful for those that are working to build, configure, and maintain secure systems (within their means).

Windows XP's end of extended support is over two and half years away… and while its installed base is shrinking, we still have lots of customers around the world that use it. Please consider our request. It's a difficult economy at the moment, and small/medium sized business needs all the help you can give.

Thanks for the consideration,
F-Secure Labs

Updated to add: Few things generate comments and debate as does support for Windows XP. Tech journalist Larry Seltzer's comment to this post includes a link to his article: I want my Windows Update Rollup! That article now has more than 50 comments of its own. And among those comments are links to resources that others have found helpful.

Check them out, and join in the discussion. Cheers.