XP Users, If You Haven’t Installed SP3, DON’T
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Microsoft recently released Service Pack 3 for XP, essentially the last big update for XP before they toss XP in the corner and stop supporting it altogether.
The problem comes with a lot of reports of serious problems. People have installed SP3 only to be greeted with computers that no longer boot or will sit there and reboot endlessly. This problem is apparently particularly bad on computers with AMD processors but has also been showing up on Intel hardware as well.
Frankly, Until there is A) a major fix for this problem and B) a really good reason for using this service pack in the first place, I personally intend to stay as far away from it as possible.
My thought is that Microsoft ought to find out what’s causing the problems (though there is apparently some idea about that already) and modify the service pack to fix those problems from the get-go and then re-release the service pack as SP3-A.
Once they do something like that, I’d still recommend waiting and letting others test it out and run it for a few months first before trying it yourself.
Besides, from what I understand SP3 is supposed to be a bundled culmination of all the various security fixes since SP2.
Another factor, Apparently once SP3 is in and working, you get “upgraded” to IE8 and you can’t go back to 5.5 or 6 if that’s the version you trust and prefer. (not that I would ever suggest that anyone should ever use IE or OE, Firefox and Thunderbird are light years better.)
Technorati Tags: boot+crash, flaw, reboot, service+pack+3, sp3, windows, windows+service+pack
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Using SP3 for bout 3 weeks now with no problem. Also you are wrong IE Version 8 does not come with it
I’m glad you’re one of the (from what I can see) relatively few who are getting SP3 installed without problems.
I was incorrect about IE8, It is actually IE 7 that it wants to install and won’t allow downgrading to 5.5 or 6
For me and my amd powered machine, sp3 works just fine
It’s good to see that the thing is working for some. However I’ve seen enough negative reports that I’m going to wait a while before I consider applying SP3. Especially since I can see zero pressing reasons to do so at all.