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Support for Windows XP Service Pack 1 has officially ended today.
While Microsoft only guarantees support for a service pack 12 months after the following service pack's launch, SP1 was supported for over two years after SP2's release in August 2004.
When SP1 made its debut on September 9, 2002, it included several new features and security enhancements. The pack contained over 300 patches in one 133MB installation, and it included USB 2.0 support. In response to a legal battle with Sun, SP1 also installed the Java Virtual Machine although Microsoft's own virtual machine was still included in the release. Another user-friendly/anti-trust feature of the service pack was that it finally gave customers a dialog where they could modify the default applications for certain tasks. Located in the Add or Remove Programs window, the "Set program access and defaults" tab allowed users to change defaults settings for e-mail, instant messaging, web browsing, multimedia, and the operating system's virtual machine. In Windows Vista, the section has been renamed from "Set program access and defaults" to "Default Programs", and it can be found on the Start Menu.
Microsoft has not yet announced when support for Windows XP SP2 will end.
While Microsoft only guarantees support for a service pack 12 months after the following service pack's launch, SP1 was supported for over two years after SP2's release in August 2004.
When SP1 made its debut on September 9, 2002, it included several new features and security enhancements. The pack contained over 300 patches in one 133MB installation, and it included USB 2.0 support. In response to a legal battle with Sun, SP1 also installed the Java Virtual Machine although Microsoft's own virtual machine was still included in the release. Another user-friendly/anti-trust feature of the service pack was that it finally gave customers a dialog where they could modify the default applications for certain tasks. Located in the Add or Remove Programs window, the "Set program access and defaults" tab allowed users to change defaults settings for e-mail, instant messaging, web browsing, multimedia, and the operating system's virtual machine. In Windows Vista, the section has been renamed from "Set program access and defaults" to "Default Programs", and it can be found on the Start Menu.
Microsoft has not yet announced when support for Windows XP SP2 will end.