windows xp service packs

i've got windows xp and have sp3 downloaded and i was on the internet and seen stuff about sp4 but i've heard godd things and bad but i did'nt know sp4 was out is it and is it worth installing on my system

 

There is no XP SP4 from Microsoft. I would be wary of installing (or even downloading) anything that purports to be SP4.

 

sorry but i don'nt know if i am doing this right or not but if you can tell me that will be good

 

Frank4d is correct.There is no XP sp4 that Microsoft released.
Anything claiming to be sp4 is by someone else.
And that's a risk I wouldn't take.

 

If I run Belarc Advisor on my XP Home computer (which doesn't have SP3 installed), it lists a number of recent patches under the sub heading 'SP4', as per this list;

"SP4
KB938464 on 09/09/2008 (details...)
KB946648 on 12/08/2008 (details...)
KB950760 on 11/06/2008 (details...)
KB950762 on 11/06/2008 (details...)
KB950974 on 12/08/2008 (details...)
KB951066 on 12/08/2008 (details...)
KB951072-V2 on 12/08/2008 (details...)
KB951376 on 11/06/2008 (details...)
KB951376-V2 on 08/07/2008 (details...)
KB951698 on 11/06/2008 (details...)
KB951748 on 08/07/2008 (details...)
KB952287 on 12/08/2008 (details...)
KB952954 on 12/08/2008 (details...)
KB953839 on 12/08/2008 (details...)

I have checked the details of a couple of these patches and they both appeared to be Critical ones. It is definitely correct that no single SP4 has been issued by MS, so I have no idea why this particular group of modern patches (which most people will have obtained separately in the 'normal' way from Windows Updates) should have been gathered under the SP4 sub heading, unless this is some odd convention used by Belarc. (There is also a small group of patches gathered under the sub heading 'SP 0', so this may support the idea that these categories are purely a Belarc thing)

What I can say is that, to the best of my less than reliable memory, similar sub groups seem to have been present in most Belarc scans that I have run previously, although I have never paid them much attention before!

 

Who knows what strange things go on with MS software? Unless there are elements of 2K included in XP, it's hard to see why SP4 should get a mention in the listing of my modern XP patches (apart from it being some quirk of the Belarc program).

Then again, I sometimes see references to IE 5 (or 5.5) when some programs are scanning or listing things, so perhaps it's all to do with backward compatibility (or is it because MS have never got round to removing all the redundant code from each of the various versions of Windows?).

 

Once MS releases a Service pack, all Updates released after that time are listed as being part of the next Service Pack. Just a way to show what SP the update is part of. Doesn't mean the SP has (or ever will) be released.

Jerry