Guide to hardware-based DEP protection
When the WMF exploit hit the wild and existing workarounds were tacky and the official Microsoft patch a week away, the DEP or Data Execution Prevention feature shined through when it was completely enabled and supported by NX or XD capable hardware. While NX and XD also support other operating systems like Windows 2003 Server with SP1, BSD, and Linux, the vast majority of users will use it through Windows XP SP2.