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The great Windows XP Beta 2 rollout won't happen until Sunday, according to Register sources which we believe are close to the centre of the sausage factory. They certainly make more sense than the weird and contradictory stuff that's been coming out of official and semi-official channels.

There were, we are told, several last minute show-stoppers that derailed the Beta 2 rollout on Wednesday. As far as we can make out, they haven't uncovered whatever it's going to be that stops it going live tonight yet (as Brian Livingstone told ZD, it's Friday unless there's a show-stopper), but our sources say it's defintely not tonight. And we note some weird semi-official stuff that appears to indicate that it'll kind of be finished tonight, but that for some unfathomable reason it will take time to be made available to the testers. Who'll get it by about Sunday.

Anyway, what we hear is that the last minute problems fell into two categories - security issues, and "a problem around wireless cards on certain laptops." A total of five bugs fell into Wednesday's show-stopper category. But they're fixed now, and in the process of being signed off. We could maybe speculate that, given Bill's going to be opening WinHEC in a couple of days, the wireless issue might have been pertinent. The weird build number 2462a was simply an internal interim produced in the Redmond Burn Lab, and it's unlikely it'll escape, or indeed that anybody would want it by the time it did.

What they do want is Beta 2. A noted Netherlands FTP site has already placed a price on its head - full life privileges and access all areas for the first genuine leak of Beta 2. Don't ask. We're not telling you, and if you can't find it yourself you're not hard enough.

* The Register's Hazardous Waste Squad will be checking in first thing tomorrow, GMT, prepared to dig a big hole and bury all of this with due humility if some satirist in Redmond does push the button at midnight, Pacific Time. ®

Related story:
WinXP Beta 2 in not delayed again drama

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