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First off! You know you really ought to upgrade to Service Pack 3. Microsoft ended support for SP2 back in July, and stopped issuing patches for it.

Maybe you’ve had a bad experience with a service pack in the past. Maybe you just don’t like change. Whatever the reason, if you’re stubbornly clinging to SP2, but you need to apply a critical security update that requires SP3, there is a registry edit you can do that will make XP SP2 appear to be an SP3 machine.

Microsoft doesn’t support it, and you do it at your own risk, but here are the steps:


  1. 1. Open your registry editor and navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Windows
    2. In the right pane, double click the value CSDVersion.
    3. In the value data field, change the hexidecimal value (200) to 300.
    4. Click OK.
    5. Close the registry editor and reboot.


About Thomas

Computer geek from the age of 7, which amounts to 30 years of computer experience. From the early days (when every computer company had their own OS) of DOS, Windows 1.0 through Seven...

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Comments

3 thoughts on “How to make XP SP2 think it’s SP3”

  1. RSVR85 says:

    So what does this do exactly?([Quick-Tip])

    Also, i get a feeling that anyone still with XP SP2 doesn’t really care about security updates in the first place!

  2. tysroby says:

    Why would anybody be stubborn enough to willingly not update to SP3!?

  3. Gordo Bit says:

    I agree!

Comments are closed.


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