Windows XP Service Pack 3 good or bad?

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mobusta1

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I dunno why after so many months of release I never got the windows update notifcation but today I finally got the notification asking me if I want to install sp3 on my comp. I just want to know what general consensus is here at on the [H] in regards to SP3 for XP. I have heard from some people that some of there software stopped working and they weren't able to install a few things. Just FYI this will be on my laptop and not my sig rig. I only use this laptop for web surfing, IMing, school work, word, movies and things like that. No gaming or anything intense is done on it.
 
Your best bet is a nice fresh clean install with a properly slipstreamed XP SP3 CD. If that's not a possibility, then at least make a backup of your system partition if possible and then install SP3 using the standalone installer.

There's nothing wrong with SP3, it's a good thing definitely. There have been some reports over the past few months of in-place upgrades (using the standalone installer or doing it from Windows Update) but they're typically application related or driver problems for a variety of reasons. In my experience I've never heard of any major complaints or issues of note when people do a clean install using a slipstreamed XP SP3 installation CD, hence my recommendation.

I never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever recommend upgrading to a new Service Pack, but that's just me and my decades of experience dealing with the aftermath of such situations - mainly that happened many years past but really peaked with XP SP2 when it was released. A lot of stuff got wrecked because of the changes SP2 brought with it. SP3 isn't even in the same class as that... ;)

You'll be fine, just back up your critical data just in case - better safe than sorry, regardless.

Good luck...
 
I never, in my life, had any issues with any service pack - and that goes for XP's service packs too. SP3 has been perfect on every system I installed it on.
 
Recently updated my main rig's XP SP2 to SP3 with no issues whatsoever and it's been problem free since. Also upgraded from SP1 to SP2 long ass time ago and never had issues. Only issues I've ever encountered with XP is when I personally messed around with certain system settings or after installing bad drivers.

The system runs better than when I first installed XP on it... many tweaks after and getting a good defragmenter didn't hurt either.
 
No problems with deploying it to many clients. As long as the computers are clean, healthy, relatively free from malware....in my experience in supporting many small business networks for many years, never had a problem with service packs with XP or 2K.

The only service pack that I had issues with was the original service pack 6 for NT 6. Which Microsoft rather quickly fixed by pulling that and releasing service pack 6a.

Not much for new features with XP sp3, mostly just saves you build time when building new machines. For existing healthy machines with sp2 and current on updates...doesn't add much for ya.
 
installed Windows XP SP3 on my work machine, everything worked fine and smooth but i noticed that it did mess up my Customs Themes that came with my windows XP SP2 Disk. Anyone know how to fix this ?
 
I installed SP3 on my computer with no problems, and don't notice anything different. I installed it on another computer and it crashed it, physical memory dumping, and endless rebooting. I started up in safe mode, un-installed it and it worked fine again. So it's kinda up to you.

Edit: oh yeah, SP3 did screw up my UXTheme patch. and I had to do some creative things to get it working again.
 
I've had SP3 installed since it was first available. Haven't had any problems with it:).
 
I just did SP3 on six older P4 Dell machines for a biz and absolutely zero problems.
 
I've upgraded to SP3 on a 5 year old install of Windows XP (was installed as SP0, updated to SP1, SP2, and now SP3) with no issues whatsoever.

Maybe I'm strange (I see people around here reinstalling Windows to change video drivers), but I don't feel an OS install should ever be necessary. I've even upgraded motherboards multiple times without reinstalling XP (no, I didn't even run a repair install, I syspreped).
 
I have been having many Winsock/TCP type problems after SP3 was updated.

Randomly after 10 minutes of system being booted the computer will lose connection to the network, won't ping anything, won't resolve DNS.

You can even release/renew IP and still cant get to anything.

Can't figure it out.

Rebooting fixes it though.....for another 10 minutes.

/scratches head.
 
LoStMaTt said:
I have been having many Winsock/TCP type problems after SP3 was updated.

Randomly after 10 minutes of system being booted the computer will lose connection to the network, won't ping anything, won't resolve DNS.

You can even release/renew IP and still cant get to anything.

Can't figure it out.

Rebooting fixes it though.....for another 10 minutes.

/scratches head.
Click to expand...

try this:
open up a cmd line window
type "netsh winsock reset"
then after it's done reboot.
 
If you have AMD processor, please apply the AMD patch from Microsoft before installing SP3. If you haven't, you will have a slower boot, network disconnections, and random freezes.
 
SP3 has been problem free here as well. Many boxes only got the update notice over the last 2 weeks, one hasn't even been updated yet via Auto-Update (I think that was because it needed to install a new version of the Genuine Disadvantage tool).

SP3 did kill one box but that was due to a hardware failure that was triggered by the install activity.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
The only service pack that I had issues with was the original service pack 6 for NT 6. Which Microsoft rather quickly fixed by pulling that and releasing service pack 6a.
Click to expand...

Jesus, that just brought back a flood of bad memories. :eek:
 
I did have trouble with installing it after it was slipstreamed onto two different disks in two attempts to get the slipstreaming done. However, the problem I had seemed to be related to nLite rather than anything else.

However, using the full SP3 file I had no trouble updated SP2 machines to SP3.

 
I've never had any trouble with XP SP3. I have installed XP SP3 on over 40 XP PCs for the firm I work at and have not encountered a single issue.
 
I install SP3 2 weeks ago. I didn't sense any major improvement, but I didn't encounter any problems.
 
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