Microsoft Windows 2003 Service Pack 2 was quietly released to automatic updates yesterday.
As you can see in the screen shot below – there is no need to worry about it installing without your knowledge. It requires that you manually agree to install it before it is applied to your system
It definitely is not a small download. It is around 370 MB, so be prepared to wait some time for it to finish. Microsoft has a top 10 list that mentions “customer driven changes” to tools like MSCONFIG, and DCDIAG.
Opening up MSCONFIG I only can see one change. It has a tools tab that is a list of commonly used admin programs. You can select one of them, and launch.
With DCDIAG, it seems that the new addition is the ability to save the output to a XML formatted log file. This is a nice addition for those who use log collection tools.
A few other improvements: WPA2 wireless authentication support has been added. Also IPSEC has again been improved.
The good thing about this service pack is that it is an incremental change that should have minimal impact on most of your applications. Unlike Service Pack 1, which made some major changes that broke some software. I would imagine that a few of you out there are still running 2003 without SP1 for this very reason.
As always test thoroughly before you install this update, but I think for most people it will be a smooth transition.