AVAST and WIN XP SP2

What is the highest version of AVAST (free edition) that runs in Win XP SP2?

Posts in early feb indicate AVAST 7.x runs on WIN XP SP2 but not clear what if all v7.x runs on it.

Avast 8.x came out late Feb and min specs page now says WIN XP SP3.
Can anyone confirm if they have run AVAST 8.x with win XP SP2 successfully?

Will the auto update leave AVAST 7.x as is or will it try to do 8.x update?

(Yes I know you should put SP3 on but trying to keep change system as little as possible for now.)

Please update your XP to SP3.

Yes I know that, but as I have software that has issues with Win XP SP3 (separate problem). I need a virus scanner to replace Grisoft AVG as that one is failing to install on SP2 as well. So I need to know if it is know answers to original questions.

Until you install SP3 your OS is a bleeding security hole that no antivirus can prectect you from. Keep in mind by Q4 Microsoft is stopping XP Support.

avast v8.x minimum OS requirement is still Win2000 (yes, some features won’t work on Win2000 or WinXP SP0/SP1: e.g. autosandbox, sandbox, safezone; you’ll have slower file-system shield, etc). Official note about XP SP3 is not correct (there’re still some win2k users on this forum). As for avast 9.x, users with Win2000 won’t be able to install this version – we’ll use a newer development kits which can’t produce a code which can be executed on Win2000, but XP SP2 should be still supported. Our statistics are as follow: we have 33% XP users (22% with SP2, 78% with SP3).