What does service pack actually mean? Find out inside PCMag's comprehensive tech and computer-related encyclopedia.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 is currently still in development, though in the home stretch. In fact, Release Candidate 2 of SP3 has been released and may signal that a final build is imminent.. The ...

Windows 8.1 is, from a support perspective, equivalent to a Service Pack (Microsoft lists it as the "latest update" to Windows 8), but going forward we'd expect even this kind of update to ...

Service Pack 1 for the operating system was released in 2011, meaning that a fresh install has five years of individual patches to download and install. Typically, ...

Microsoft Office 2010 Service Pack 2 is in private beta. Exchange 2010 Service Pack 3 just arrived this week.The Office team is not moving away from the service-pack model the way that Windows is.

Given the service-pack-level-scope of these tighter releases (and I mean that in a good way, not as an insult), calling it "Windows Server 2012 SP1" might get more people implementing it sooner ...

With Windows XP SP2 support ending in three weeks, a new report highlights the security risks that come with running an unsupported service pack. If your business is still running Service Pack 2 ...

In fact, beginning in Windows 8, the service pack, as we know it from previous versions of Windows, is essentially a dead idea.Much like updates on your smartphone, Microsoft is continually adding ...

Microsoft this week released Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3, which lets IT pros run the mail server on Windows Server 2008 R2. The arrival of the service pack means that organizations don't ...

SP3 will cause Active Directory schema changes, so Microsoft's release notes suggest preparing Active Directory and domains prior to installing this service pack. SP3 is cumulative, meaning that it ...