XP getting up to date

plodr · Dec 28, 2012

I have an old HP laptop (2001) currently running Win 2K and hasn't been on the internet in years.

The laptop came with ME installed. I also purchased an XP upgrade CD for it when I bought it. I'm going to wipe 2K, do a factory restore to ME then update to XP.

I've downloaded SP2 and SP3 from Microsoft to install before connecting to the internet to do all the missing updates after SP3.

Question: Can I jump from XP directly to SP2 or do I need some sort of SP1? I see there is a SP1 and a SP1a.

I found this

Windows XP Service Pack 3 is a cumulative update of all previous service packs for XP. The service pack installer checks HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows\CSDVersion registry key to see if has a value greater than or equal to 0x100, and if it does it will allow the update to proceed. Otherwise it will prompt to install either XP SP1 or SP2.
Click to expand...

which makes me think installing SP2 followed by SP3 will be okay.

Novice · Dec 28, 2012

plodr,

If memory serves correct then you will need at least SP1 to install SP2. However, I seem to remember that having SP1 will allow the installation of SP3 without SP2, as SP3 contains everything that SP2 did and more! Just checked and see that SP1a is still available for download!

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XP getting up to date

plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

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