The stable (RC) version of the Unofficial Service Pack 4 for Windows XP is now available. It contains new security and stability improvements and features increased performance. This version will become final if user testing does not reveal any problems.
SP4 RC contains all updates for Windows XP up to May 2014 (IE8, WMP11, MCE2005 with Update Rollup 2, MSN Explorer 10.5), .NET Frameworks 1.0, 1.1, 3.5, 4.0 (the latter is not installed by default), XPS Viewer EP, MSXML4.0, Windows Search 4.0 (disabled by default), Bitlocker, Go Reader, and Windows Powershell 2.0 (disabled by default) while Windows Messenger has been removed.
Also included are security improvements against DLL injection (full path references in the registry are used, so it is clear which files are referenced each time) and fewer catalogs are used – which increases performance.
There have also been some customizations that automatically resolve some problems in specific KB articles – for example in Windows Firewall – and digitally signed patched files have been created that allow the use of XP on more than 4 GB of RAM (these files are available separately and must be used together with SP4).
Compared to Beta 3, the new version is clearly improved, since it supports all the expected installation scenarios and resolves many glitches.
You can download the files from here.
Install the files at your own risk. Remember that the files do not come from Microsoft, as they have stopped supporting XP.
