Service Pack 1 Upgrade Process
The upgrade process to Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 is similar to any service pack upgrade—test, test, test, test, and test some more before introducing changes to production. You need to test all aspects of your business requirements and management tools against a domain with domain controllers that have been upgraded. This upgrade will not require you to make any Active Directory changes. However, there are non-Active Directory-related changes, specifically security changes, in SP1 that could impact your line of business applications and management capabilities.
Warning
One non-AD related change in Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 that has caused a significant number of issues in managing domains and servers is a change to the Discretionary Access Control List (DACL) of the Service Control (SC) Manager. This change locks down the ability to remotely enumerate installed services to administrators. Previously, an administrator could delegate to a non-administrator the ability to stop and start services. This delegation will break under SP1 if the tool used to manage the services enumerates the services on the remote server. You must either re-open the DACL access on the SC Manager using the Support Tool SC.EXE or use a tool that doesn't enumerate the services prior to managing the delegated service.
The Service Pack 1 installation files can be downloaded directly from the Microsoft Website; see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 889101 for the ...