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By Jo Best, 25 August 2004 11:15

NEWS System administrators and IT managers' fears that XP SP2 may break home-grown apps have already caused some corporate rollouts to be delayed. To get users back on track and developers' blood pressure down, Redmond has released an application compatibility testing guide for XP SP2.

The guide, which can be downloaded from Microsoft here, is designed to help administrators "test and mitigate application compatibility issues". Microsoft adds that the guide is meant for any size of network and is "as relevant to peer-to-peer environments as it is to Active Directory environments".

At over 100 pages long, the guide doesn't make for light reading. It covers the changes that SP2 will wreak on machines running XP, how to go about testing for incompatibility issues and how to fix the problems that come up. The guide also provides two possible deployment roadmaps for businesses unsure on how to go about rolling out the service pack.

In the guide, Microsoft warns: "[SP2's] increasing security in the network environment can result in legitimate applications or features not operating as expectedÂ… applications that were not designed to meet these higher security requirements may experience some compatibility issues."

The guide, however, gives advice about how to reconfigure XP to help keep applications on their feet but adds: "This procedure is not recommended but may be necessary in the short term". The party line from Microsoft, however, is that it's the apps not the OS that should be rejigged and security settings should always be left at their highest settings once administrators have finished tinkering.

Gates and chums are well aware of how SP2 can cause apps to need an overhaul - software behemoth has already published a list of 40 programs that will appear not to work when the service pack is installed and has had to issue a patch to allow its CRM product to go on operating post-SP2.