Microsoft have officially release Windows XP Service Pack 3 RC2 recently. Windows XP Service Pack 3 RC2 may be not worth to download now as they are still in Release Candidate 2 (RC2), that mean Windows XP Service Pack 3 RC2 is still in development and testing stages. As always, Microsoft claim that Windows XP Service Pack 3 is designed to improve overall system performance and stability

I have installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 on my Windows XP development system, and didn’t find any visible changes to the operating system except Microsoft Management Console (MMC 3.0), Microsoft’s XML parser (MSXML6), and the Microsoft Windows Installer. But let us talk about the improvement that Windows XP Service Pack 3 bring that most of us won’t bother to take notice. The most notable improvement in security is call Network Access Protection (NAP). Network Access Protection gives network administrators a way to determine a computer’s access to network resources based on the computer’s identity. Windows XP Service Pack 3 also include Wi-Fi Protected Access 2, which supports the new Wi-Fi Alliance certification for secure wireless networks.

You can download Windows XP Service Pack 3 RC2 here. The download size is about 315MB for me, and it took me around 1 hour to upgrade my Windows XP Service Pack 2 to Windows XP Service Pack 3.

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