Customers cautious on XP Service Pack 2

Companies are planning to approach Microsoft's XP Service Pack 2 security upgrade with caution, and will wait rather than install it immediately.

XP SP2 is heavily focused on security, with over 80 per cent of the code related to upgrading security settings and closing ports.

A new version of the applications compatibility toolkit is being released specifically for the service pack.

Ian Auger, head of IT and communications at ITN, told vnunet.com: "I tend to leave it to individual IT teams, but I am sure that we will wait for a few weeks to see if anyone has problems. I am sure that we would not install it immediately.

"We have been caught before installing urgent software patches for other manufacturers' products, and sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth."

Alan Shrimpton, head of information services at Avon and Somerset police, said: "We have not evaluated Service Pack 2 as yet.

"Like a lot of police sites we are still using Windows NT for many applications. There are other projects that have a higher priority and we will deal with those first."

Paul Randle, XP product manager for Microsoft UK, claimed that 90 per cent of the time applications will "just work" with SP2.

"Of the rest, in 70 per cent of cases the problem will be a minor glitch, but a few customers may have to do some code work on the others," he said.

"We've been in touch with all our enterprise customers via their account teams to smooth the way."