Microsoft has given its customers an early holiday present with the first release candidate (RC1) for Windows XP Service Pack 3. Windows XP SP3 RC1 is a pre-release intended for post-beta testing. It also puts to rest the speculation that Microsoft will or will not release a third service pack for Windows XP.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 is currently scheduled for full release during the first quarter of 2008, at which time its contents will be fully described in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 936929: Release Notes for Windows XP Service Pack 3. Until then, the official description resides in the PDF file Overview of Windows XP Service Pack 3. An excellent alternate source of ongoing SP3 information is Paul Thurrott’s Windows XP Service Pack 3 FAQ.

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It’s getting close to the gift-giving season and you might be thinking about building (or rebuilding) a Windows computer as a present for someone, or possibly even as a gift to yourself. When I rebuild a computer, I like to install a standard set of utilities and tools that are very useful for keeping the computer working well and for fixing any problems that will inevitably occur.

Windows XP and Vista come with a variety of software tools for providing useful services, such as backing up and defragmenting the hard drive and scanning for malicious software. However, not all tools you may need are included with Windows, and certainly not the best tools for every job. And when you start adding up the costs of all the tools you might need, you’ve just added several hundred dollars to the cost of rebuilding that old computer! Doesn’t anybody make good Windows tools that are also free?

In this article, I look at ten categories of computer utilities used to fix, maintain, and provide useful services for Windows computers, and I make recommendations of free tools for you to try. All of the tools listed are freely distributed under a public license and are available from their owner’s Web site, or from the amazing selection of Freeware tools at MajorGeeks.com.

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