Microsoft Releases SP2 for Windows 2003

First of all I would like to apologize to those of you who check this blog regularly. Our free daylight saving time patch for windows was more popular than we ever expected. I have this thing about having *every* email answered. Maybe it was not such a good thing since as we approached the new DST date we were getting 100s of emails an hour. This made it very difficult to write anything new in the blog as we were all busy here answering questions about Windows daylight saving issues.

Things are back to normal here, so it is time to move on....to the news of the day.

It looks like the SP2 release for SQL was an omen that MS would release a new service pack for Windows as well.

Only a few days ago they slipped it out to their download sites - Service pack 2 for Windows 2003.

I have just started playing with it, and there are a few interesting updates that may be very useful to some of you:

- Group policy support for WPA2 (Wifi Protected Access 2)
- Network card support for WPA2
- Simplification of IPSec policy (This was desperately needed!)

I think the most interesting feature I see is in this final blurb on the Service pack 2 info page:

Starting with this version of Windows Server 2003 with SP2, Remote Installation Services is replaced by Windows Deployment Services. You can use Windows Deployment Services to set up new computers through a network-based installation without having to be physically present at each computer and without having to install directly from DVD media. For more information about Windows Deployment Services, see the Windows Deployment Services Update Step-by-Step Guide

I will be checking these all out, and posting what I find. Also we have been accepted to the Windows Home Server Beta. I will be posting screen shots, and my findings of this new version of Windows.

Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Thursday, March 15, 2007

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