News early this week that Microsoft is trying to iron out a bug with NX CPU execution protection technology only spelled bad news. We can confirm that RC2 isn"t likely to be released to beta testers until early next week. 2138 is the latest compile internally but doesn"t hold the golden rc2 tagging yet.
This only points to 2139/2140 being the RC2 build and going out to testers within a week. Initially Microsoft were aiming for a June RTM for Windows XP SP2 but delays with security center bugs and application compatibility problems have delayed the highly anticipated update until July. Because of this, development of Longhorn is almost at a standstill whilst the main build team focus on XPSP2 instead of Longhorn. Many developers internally are itching to get back to Longhorn development naturally. According to internal sources 2137(xpsp.040520-1754) was the build that the NX problems have come from.