XP users face unexpected upgrade
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Unwary users may find Windows XP updates itself.
11 April 2005 PC users at companies that have yet to conduct a managed installation of Microsoft's security-focussed Windows XP Service Pack 2 may find that their machines take a little longer to boot up tomorrow - possibly several hours longer.
This delay, and potential problems running some existing applications, will stem from the expiration, at midnight tonight, of the Windows XP SP2 blocker tool that many companies downloaded eight months ago.
Microsoft released the tool, a registry key that prevents SP2 from being automatically loaded by the Windows Update (WU) and Automatic Updates (AU) utilities, to give companies more time to test and validate what, by Microsoft's own admission, is "a significant" upgrade which reaches deep inside the operating system.
But from day one Microsoft has emphasised that Windows SP2 is a "critical upgrade" that "strongly recommends" customers deploy, and made it plain that the registry key would expire on April 12.
Publicly, Microsoft believes the expiration of the SP 2 blocker shouldn't have too much impact. Four months after the release of SP2, 58% of a global XP customer sample said they had already deployed it, and most others are committed to doing so in the next months. "The reality is in the UK that not many companies will have blocking switched off. If you're in control of your desktop, you don't have anything to worry about" a Microsoft spokesperson said.
Still, there may be a considerable number of companies that will be caught unprepared. For these, Microsoft has made tools available that will roll-back SP2 deployments, returning systems to their former configuration. However, this may not do much to scrape the egg of the faces of IT managers who forgot to put SP2 upgrade in their To-Do lists.
