Microsoft has finally ended its silence about the upcoming releases of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2, which the company is developing in tandem and expects to ship by the end of the year. According to a posting to the Windows Server team blog by Ward Ralston, Microsoft will ship a single SP2 release that will cover all 32-bit and x64 versions of Windows 2003, Windows 2003 R2, and Windows 2003 for Itanium-based Systems, as well as XP x64. "Windows Server 2003 SP2 is back to a ‘standard’ service pack from Microsoft," Ralston wrote, noting that the previous SP1 release made "some pretty big changes to the way we do security," and "introduced a cycle of application testing and some compatibility issues." Ralston noted that SP2 will include all previously released Security Bulletin Updates; roll-ups of all individual hotfixes since Microsoft first released Windows 2003; fixes to increase reliability, robustness, and security; a collection of customer-requested features; and features to support Windows Vista. In addition, Windows 2003 SP2 will offer a few new features, including Windows Deployment Services, Microsoft Management Console (MMC) 3.0, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) 2.0, the Scalable Networking Pack, per-port firewall authentication capabilities, and some performance improvements for Windows Virtualization. Some of these features, such as the Scalable Networking Pack and MMC 3.0, are available separately as discrete downloads.
Microsoft Details SP2 for Windows Server 2003, XP x64
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