Microsoft pulls plug on XP SP2 after users say they're not ready

The Windows XP Service Pack 2 saga has taken another twist - Microsoft has been forced to delay its internet rollout of the service pack after enterprise customers told the Redmond behemoth they didn't want the security update. At least, not yet.

Service Pack 2 was meant to be available via Microsoft's Automatic Update section on Monday but has now been delayed for several days. Only those using Windows Update are able to get their service pack fix at the moment.

Windows Update is commonly used by corporate customers but for those businesses running XP and not using Windows Update, home users will beat them to the punch. Users with XP Home Edition will be getting the update via Automatic update on Wednesday, while all other versions will have SP2 available from 25 August "at the earliest", according to Gates and co.

In a note Redmond sent to its corporate customers, it explained that business customers had not had sufficient time to temporarily block the update - Microsoft released a tool for the purpose last week - and so needed the rollout schedule altered.

Microsoft said in its note: "Since some of our customers… utilise Automatic Update for a collection of your PCs, and since your organisation may not yet be prepared to deploy Windows XP SP2 onto those machines, we recently made available a mechanism for temporarily blocking the download of Windows XP SP2 to those machines using Automatic Update.

"Last week, we received feedback from our corporate customers that they would like more time to put this temporary blocking mechanism into place. Based on that feedback, we have altered the delivery schedule of Windows XP SP2."

The rollout of XP SP2 has had its fair share of problems. Earlier this week, Microsoft published a list of nearly 50 programs that will appear to fall over when SP2 is installed.