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Since some of our customers, such as your organization, utilize Automatic Update for a collection of your PC’s, and since your organization may not yet be prepared to deploy Windows XP SP2 onto those machines, we recently made available a mechanism for temporarily blocking the download of Windows XP SP2 to those machines using Automatic Update (see attached). Last week, we received feedback from our corporate customers that they would like more time to put this temporary blocking mechanism into place. Based on that feedback, we have altered the delivery schedule of Windows XP SP2. The machines in your organization using Automatic Update will not receive Windows XP SP2 until Wednesday, August 25 – at the earliest – as long as those machines are running Windows XP Professional Edition.



Here is a summary of the altered delivery schedule for Windows XP SP2:



8/6 Release to manufacturing



8/9 Release to Microsoft Download Center (full network installation package)

Release to MSDN subscription site (CD ISO image)



8/10 Release to Automatic Update (for machines running pre-release versions of Windows XP SP2 only)



8/16 Release to Software Update Services



8/18 Release to Automatic Update for users running Windows XP Home Edition only



8/25 Release to Automatic Update for all Windows XP users including those running Windows XP Professional Edition

Release to Windows Update for interactive user installations



As mentioned above, Microsoft has already shipped a mechanism to temporarily disable delivery of Windows XP SP2 via Automatic Update and Windows Update. For more information on this mechanism and to download the associated tools, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/technet/winxpsp2.

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