SP2 on XP Home evaluation
 

Our previous article on the security disappointments of SP2 drew considerable criticism because we cited very poor service to the security needs of home users, although we tested it on XP Pro. In fairness, we felt it reasonable to repeat the procedure on XP Home, and note any differences.

As before, we evaluated SP2 on a single test machine, following a clean install of XP Home with no configuration changes and no third-party software, additional applications, or drivers. We installed XP with the NTFS file system, choosing all of the factory defaults and obeying all prompts, then patched it with each recommended security update including SP1 before installing SP2, to be certain we didn't miss anything.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/17/xphome_sp2/