As you probably already knew (or didn't know), Microsoft has stopped support for Windows XP SP2 in July of this year (2010). That means for everything security issue, vulnerability and etc. it is also discovered at Windows operating systems, among the versions of XP only SP3 site still receives patch-uri for these, which makes as the SP2 (and previous versions) to be somewhat (more) risky. One of the possibilities would be to upgradati la Windows XP SP3. However, even if it is the most recommended by most IT professionals and, of course, by Microsoft, this is not a suitable solution for all XP users. And that's because, as we experienced, XP Service Pack 3 has crashed many users' PCs, gaining in this way the reputation of SP unstable.

So, if you still use one operating system XP SP2 and you don't want to upgrade to SP3 (an extremely simple solution would be upgrade-ul la Windows 7 :D) because of the not so pleasant experiences you had with it, you can solve the security support problem convingand the SP2 to think that it is actually SP3 (thus, the operating system will still remain XP SP2, but it will be identified as XP SP3) with the help of a small register hack.

How can we turn XP SP2 into XP SP3 with the help of system registries

• open Registry Editor (Open Run, taste regedit And give Enter) and navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlWindows
• in the right panel, right-click on the entry (DWORD) CSDVersion and select Modify from the displayed menu
• then edit the hexadecimal value (hexadecimal) - and not the decimal one (!) –  of the entrance from 200 in 300 and click on OK

• Close regedit and restart the PC for the changes to take effect.

Note: Microsoft does not recommend this method (obviously). Since it is a modification of the registries, make a back-up of them before following the steps above to avoid possible unpleasant consequences.