Experimental Lab Student Report

Lab # : 6 of 6

Lab Title: Staying Current and Troubleshooting Windows XP

Date: 04/07/2012

Prepare this Lab Report when you have completed and lab assignment. Include any charts, graphs required to complete the lab. Refer to your initial lab plan to respond to the first questions.

1. Define the problem you were solving in this lab. (If any)

2. What challenges did you meet in working towards completing the Lab?

3. Were you successful in solving the problem? Did you use methods you learned in class? If yes, explain your solution, if no, explain the solution you did use. Please be specific, and provide a detailed description of your solution.

4. What questions related to this lab still remain for you?

5. Please provide screen shots at the completion of this lab below.

6. Windows XP SP 3:

a. One of the first change was the way the SP (Service pack) was downloaded and installed. Instead of installing from a .exe as in the past, you would download a small .exe that would edit the registry sp that windows would download the install.

b. For the most part there were no visible changes. Really the only way to tell it has been installed was to look at the System Properties.

c. Here is a list of the changes based on release notes from Microsoft

i. Security Options Control Panel applet “offers more descriptive text to explain the settings and prevent incorrect configuration of settings. Although as side note I was not able to find this feature

ii. Security Changes

1. Most of what’s new has to do with security. In fact, five of the seven changes Microsoft lists on its Release Notes are security-related.

2. Particularly notable is Network Access Protection (NAP), which is available on Vista and on Windows

Server 2008 but, until now, was not available on XP. NAP gives network administrators a way to determine a computer’s access to network resources based on the PC’s identity, and whether the PC complies with security policies set by the administrator. With NAP, network administrators can set this kind of access at a finely granular level. In addition, NAP gives the administrator tools to bring the PC into compliance with the security policies, and then give the PC access to the network.

3. In addition, Microsoft has beefed up security by upgrading the random number generator. Last November, Israeli researchers said that attackers could exploit a weakness in Windows 2000’s pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) and be able to predict encryption keys. In SP3, Microsoft claims that flaw is fixed.

4. SP3 also rolls up a variety of previous patches and hot fixes. Particularly noteworthy for Wi-Fi users is WiFi Protected Access 2, which supports the new Wi-Fi Alliance certification for secure wireless networks. WPA2 is already available in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 with SP2.

iii. A performance boost

1. Microsoft did not claim any performance boosts for SP3, but one firm, after testing an earlier version of SP3, claims that in fact, users of Microsoft Office will see a moderate speed boost.

7. Step 2 Lab Portion:

a.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9064498/Windows_XP_SP3_The_improvement s_are_under_the_hood