Developers Release ‘Unofficial’ Windows XP Service Packs

An independent developer is putting the finishing touches to a new “unofficial” Service Pack for Windows XP, following the end of Microsoft’s official support for the operating system in April of this year.

“Many users – including me – who won’t be able to upgrade their old machines to a newer OS would like to easily install all Windows updates in one convenient package,” wrote the developer, known by the moniker Harkaz, in a statement introducing the software. “For this reason, I started working on a Service Pack 4 package.”

‘Unofficial SP4’

The project, titled “Unofficial Service Pack 4”, is one of several efforts by the Windows user community to continue support for the popuar operating system. As of June 2014, more than 16 percent of Windows systems were still running Windows XP, according to recent figures from Kaspersky Lab.

Unofficial SP4 is based on another, similar project, developed by the programmers known as Onepiece and Nonno Fabio, adding features such as support for live installation and slipstreaming, a way of merging patches into the installation files of a program.

Such updates are not intended to include new add-ons for Windows, but rather are roll-ups of previously existing updates issued by Microsoft. Unofficial SP4 includes updates for most Windows XP 32-bit components, including MCE and Tablet PC, according to the developer.

It also includes updates for Microsoft’s XP-based embedded systems, known at the time as POSReady, as well as Microsoft .NET Frameworks 4.0, 3.5, 1.1 and 1.0.

It can be installed on Windows XP systems running Service Pack 1 or later, the developer said. The developer has now released a third beta-test version of Unofficial SP4, which is said to be “almost stable”.

The project began in 2013, with the most recent update issued earlier this month.

Continued support

Microsoft doesn’t support such unofficial patches or recommend installing them.

In January Microsoft said it would provide a basic level of cyber security for Windows XP until July 2015. In April the company stopped providing automatic updates and technical assistance, but it is to continue issuing new malware signatures for Microsoft Security Essentials, System Center Endpoint Protection, Forefront Client Security, Forefront Endpoint Protection and Windows Intune for the rest of the year.

The company has warned that the effectiveness of these updates on out-of-support operating system will be limited, and urged customers to upgrade to either Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Several major Chinese IT vendors are to offer support services for XP in order to allow Chinese users to continue to safely use the system. The services are intended to protect Chinese XP users during a transition period that could last two or three years or longer. More than one-quarter of China’s computers are estimated to run XP, according to reports in the Chinese press.

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