Windows XP SP3 Build 3205 Released w/ New Features

jBubba writes "Windows XP SP3 build 3205 is the first official & authorized release of the next Windows XP service pack; and has been made available to testers as a part of the Windows Server 2008/Windows Vista SP1 beta program. NeoSmart Technologies has the run-down on the included 1,073 patches/hotfixes including security updates. Contrary to popular belief, Windows XP SP3 does ship with new features/components, most of which have been backported from Windows Vista. Some included features: 'New Windows Product Activation model: no need to enter product key during setup. Network Access Protection modules and policies have been brought to XP after being one of the more-well-received features in Windows Vista. New Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module - the Windows XP SP3 kernel now includes an entire module that provides easy access to multiple cryptographic algorithms and is available for use in kernel-mode drivers and services. New "Black Hole Router" detection - Windows XP SP3 can detect and protect against rogue routers that are discarding data.'"

is IE7 included?

[A little Frenchie]

all in the subject

I hate new features.

[khasim]

I was a service pack to only fix the bugs.

If there are new features, release them as a separate "upgrade".

Having both mixed together makes testing a real pain.

Re:But...

[Bacon Bits]

Yes [vmware.com] it does [microsoft.com].

Re:WGA will doom it.

[alexhs]

if it's got WGA like Windows Vista? Then no thanks.

That's the only reason we're staying away from Vista,

And I guess it was the same reason to keep w2k and stay away from xp ? Why are you using xp then ?
If this is your only reason, you better switch right now, as applications will soon require this sp anyway, or require vista.

Protection against black hole routers?

[adam613]

So that when Windows wants to secretly download an update or send your data back to Microsoft, and you prevent them from doing so at the router level, they'll be able to detect it?

The only thing that's interesting

[Opportunist]

most of which have been backported from Windows Vista.

Including DirectX 10? Few things about Vista are interesting besides that.

New features, backported from Vista ?

[Hymer]

But didn't Microsoft say that it is impossible to backport features to XP from Vista due to major differences in the system ?
...and since it is possible, will we be getting DirectX 10 on XP too ?
...and if not, why not ?
--
btw. how can this be good for Vista ?

Network Access Protection

[mugenjou]

Network Access Protection modules and policies have been brought to XP after being one of the more-well-received features in Windows Vista.

What exactly does that mean, is this only the client for the Non-Windows-and-old-Windows-Client-Lockout-feature of Windows Server 2008?
How can it be well received in Vista if Server 2008 is not yet out, and who well-received it? Or is there more to this feature?

Blackhole Avoidance?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Does anyone have any details on the blackhole routing avoidance feature? While the summary claims blackhole routers are "rogue" routers, blackhole routing is the most common way to stop DDoS attacks and excessive worm traffic from giant botnets of Windows machines. If the OS now offers botnet operators an easy way to bypass that rerouting of malware traffic, this could have serious detrimental affects upon the internet as a whole.

Re:WGA will doom it.

[Deathlizard]

Why are you using xp then

At the time we made the OS decision, We were running Windows 98/ME for whatever reason and XP was out for 5-6 months. Since we knew 2000 was on the way out and XP didn't have WGA or activation at the time for corporate accounts, we didn't see any reason not to switch to XP.

Eventually WGA came out, but it was still optional with corporate accounts. WSUS servers don't send out or receive the WGA updates Even if you wanted them. You would only get the updates by going directly to Windows Update or if you did not setup a WSUS server on the local PC's.

Right now, from the sound of this article, it looks like SP3 is going to try to push Volume Activation 2.0 on XP users, where previously Volume Activation 1.0 was used. and our IT depatrment does not want to deal with MAK keys or KMS servers.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[mrsmiggs]

Technical problems are not the half of it, it is actually against the license to use nlite for commercial purposes. Which smacks of please don't sue us, so doesn't really inspire confidence if anyone were considering using the software in any situation.

How much Vista badness will we get?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care a flying fsck about Aero and other Vista crap, I'm a Unix user who is forced by a bunch of applications to keep at home one Windows machine working. I don't play games, music or movies on this machine and of course never use it to surf the web or reading emails: there's zero personal data in its disk, therefore any spyware from Microsoft backported from Vista will be no harm to my data.
What I'm concerned about is the driver and software compatibility, stability and memory/resource consumption, and, more importantly, if these updates are forced to the user or can be refused/installed selectively.

Anybody tested this SP and can comment on the subject?

Yes, tried to get TFA, but it's /.'d.

What "massive rewrite"?

[Joce640k]

DirectX is just a COM interface to the video driver.

The main differences between DX9 and DX10 are new shaders and getting rid of all the legacy capability bits, neither of which has any dependency on the operating system or driver model.

I bet that if Microsoft gave the go-ahead to ATI/NVIDIA/INTEL there'd be DX10 support for XP in the very next release. The only reason they aren't doing it is because Microsoft is artificially blocking them.

They did the exact same thing with OpenGL when Vista was in Beta. Microsoft went around making a lot of noise saying "It can't be done!!" but the driver writers were saying it was easy. Eventually they gave in and Bingo! We have OpenGL on Vista.

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[Slashcrap]

Regardless of what you want to call it, if Windows is starting to try some sort of verification and automated avoidance of such routes it could interfere with said defenses, possible resulting in routing loops, DDoSing a router somewhere, or use of more advanced defensive techniques.

You seem slightly confused about how the Internet works, so I'm guessing you work in sales. How exactly is your average Windows machine going to avoid these routes? Or influence the paths that its packets take once they've gone past the first router in any meaningful way whatsoever? Theoretically you can do some tricks with the various lesser known ICMP message types to change the routes that your packets take, but you don't seriously think that shit still works in real life do you? Just try doing some source routing from an average ADSL connected host and see how far you get. I guess if the Windows box was acting as a router for an ISP and running BGP then it could be an issue, but we're getting into the realms of surreal comedy here. Just remember that as a general rule your ISP decides how to route your packets, not you.

I'm pretty sure that the "black hole" stuff they're talking about is the old PMTU black hole issue. I'm equally sure that Windows 95 had a registry setting that turned on black hole detection, so I'd love to know what's actually new here.

Re:The only thing that's interesting

[TheRaven64]

It's not that it can't be implemented without the new driver model (after all, NVIDIA's already supporting DX10 equivalent OpenGL extensions on XP - and Linux), just that it has been implemented that way. There's no way MS will spend money doing a massive re-write/back-port of DX10

They might if game designers start looking at nVidia's OpenGL extensions and thinking 'if we used OpenGL, we could get the same graphics quality as DirectX 10 with the same potential audience as DirectX 9. Maybe we could even do a Mac port cheaply...'

Re:SATA Drive Support on Install

[dbIII]

They would obviously want a driver for that chipset since that is really what an OS is about anyway. Some motherboards can pretend to be generic IDE anyway. I have seen win98 installed on a system with only SATA drives (the systems have very expensive A/D converter cards not supported by Win2k/XP).

Re:I hate new features.

[__aaclcg7560]

Hmm... Wouldn't it be easier to sneak in a time-sucking loop into another patch? A user would go, "Gee.. My computer is much, much slower since Patch Tuesday. I need to buy a new Windows Vista computer!"

Re:I hate new features.

[cmacb]

I suspect that the features aren't going to be any of the most important ones,

Right.

The most important features of Vista were dropped before it ever hit the street.

Re:I hate new features.

[paganizer]

Just to be clear, you are implying that they are taking the worst parts of Vista, the DRM and hassle, and putting that into XP? this would be to make it so that there is no reason not to "upgrade" to Vista, as both products will suck pretty much equally?
Sounds about right. Darn good thing I'm sticking with Win2k until they pry it from my cold, dead hard drive.

Re:What "massive rewrite"?

[n dot l]

DirectX is just a COM interface to the video driver.

I wish (really, I do - I trust NV's engineers way more than MS's). Fact is the DX runtime does a fair bit of work before the driver gets to do its bit - DX calls aren't all implemented as jmp equivalent_driver_entry_point. True, the stuff the runtime does is mostly trivial but that hasn't stoped MS from tangling the implementation into the horrible mess they've made with Vista. This is all because, right from the start, DX10's runtime assumes the new driver model is available - so it is all, essentially, designed and built on top of a platform that includes (optional) virtualization of GPU resources (for god's sake, they should have just let the IHVs do this like before), automatic graphics system restarts if the hardware ever times out (yawn), some special hookups for Aero (yawn some more), and DRM (hate).

I bet that if Microsoft gave the go-ahead to ATI/NVIDIA/INTEL there'd be DX10 support for XP in the very next release. The only reason they aren't doing it is because Microsoft is artificially blocking them.

Believe me, I share your confidence in NVIDIA and ATI's engineers. I'm sure they could back-port their DX10 stuff to XP...but MS would still have to lead the way by backporting, testing, and then maintaining and supporting their part of the DX10 implementation - which they simply won't do, for obvious reasons.

They did the exact same thing with OpenGL when Vista was in Beta. Microsoft went around making a lot of noise saying "It can't be done!!" but the driver writers were saying it was easy. Eventually they gave in and Bingo! We have OpenGL on Vista.

That really isn't what I've heard from the IHVs. MS stalled on GL support because they actually had to do something on their side to properly support it (keep in mind that Opengl32.dll, which houses all the entry points up to GL 1.something, is written and maintained by MS and that the IHVs have to plug their drivers into that, and then expose everything else as extensions on top of it). I spent some time talking to one of ATI's devs at GDC06 about the framebuffer_object extension and, since this was still news at the time, the conversation drifted to OpenGL support in Vista. According to him it went more along these lines:

1. Microsoft hands out the driver development kit and says, "This should be everything you need to implement OpenGL support."
2. IHV's look at it and say "um, no, you forgot to add this bit"
3. Microsoft says, "Huh, you're right. Tell you what, we don't have time for this (Vista's already behind, you know!) so is it OK if we support GL but just disable Aero while it's running?"
4. Someone leaks the answer and the GL community is instantly outraged that their stuff won't work with the shiny new Aero experience (that half of them had been hating on for months already).
5. Someone, again, makes the claim that MS is out to kill OpenGL (yeah, like they'd actually break Windows support for some of the all-time most popular games).
6. Microsoft finally changes its schedule and puts in the feature.
7. GL community declares victory, and then continues to gripe about how long it's taking to get Vista out.

I agree 100% that the biggest roadblock to DX10 on XP is artificial, but it's not just the evil marketing guys trying to sell Vista. There's also the evil "discontinue XP" guys that don't want to dedicate resources to the old platform. As a game developer, I hate them for it, but it is good business sense - or would have been if Vista were actually the miracle it was supposed to be and people were actually adopting it at a decent rate.

Oh well. So much for squeezing out that extra 2 FPS (wheee!) by writing a DX backend. Continuing to be an OpenGL shop...at least until we do an XBOX title.