Windows XP SP3, anyone?

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cute fuzzy bunny Yeah, XP wont run very well in 128MB. Ram is so dang cheap these days.

Darn, now you're making me wonder if my FIL ever upgraded from Win98. His RAM chips were so old I almost brittle-fractured one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cute fuzzy bunny Do note that SP3 requires a new validation agent to be installed, and none of my XP machines did that on their own. I had to open IE and run windows update, agree to the new validation agent, then SP3 self installed.

Apparently I got through that OK and was into the actual "driver database" part of the process before I decided that I had better things to do with my time on a Saturday night. I think I have to go to the Microsoft website to restart the process anyway.

After I finish all my Adobe Acrobat reading...

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I didnt have any trouble with acrobat on any of the machines I did this on, so that sounds like a YMMV thing.

[BigMoneyJim]

I couldn't find any guidance about installing SP3 on my company machines which is a far cry from what happened with SP2, but SP2 had some pretty major changes. SP3 has new features, so I was also confused about the dangers of upgrading. I ran it on my home machine for a couple of weeks with no trouble then finally put it on my work laptop.

Come to think of it, I have had some odd crashes on my laptop lately, and Outlook 2003 keeps closing itself. I'm not sure if that started before or after SP3, but I have had no problems with Citrix, networking, Acrobat Reader or anything besides what I mentioned earlier.

As far as validation, I think you can still get around that by going to Windows Update Catalog and downloading it. From Windows Update, choose "Use administrator options" on the left, then Windows Update Catalog on the right...wow, they've changed the look of it. Anyway, it's designed for network admins to download the updates and apply them to multiple computers to avoid having to repeatedly download the updates from each computer. You can get service packs and other updates for various Windows versions here without validation checking last time I checked. I usually use it for service pack releases since they're so big and I apply them to a few PCs and like to have them around for future installs.

[Buckeye]

The problem I thought could be related to SP3 in trying to attach to work servers using Citrix was actually a problem at work. No issues with SP3.

[Nords]

Well, I decided SP3's not worth the potential hassle.

It turns out that Compaq Presarios with AMD chips have a small glitch that causes multiple reboots after installing SP3. HP obligingly put out a patch that I downloaded and ran.

Except that the patch claimed my system didn't meet the requirements for needing the patch. And googling the patch's error message popped up a whole page of complaints from people who'd still had problems with SP3 after installing the patch (despite the error message). HP has been a tad nonresponsive to these concerns.

Faced with the fun of installing SP3 and then dealing with restore points, I decided that I'd rather have a life.

But SP3 went fine on our Dell laptop. And if our kid wants to use her Dell laptop on the road then she can install her own copy of SP3.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

That'll teach you to buy that AMD crap!

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cute fuzzy bunny That'll teach you to buy that AMD crap!

I still have byte marks!

We've had this one for nearly three years. It's been tweaked to death, and I don't look forward to the inevitable "upgrade"-- even though it'll undoubtedly be running on Intel chips.

[JB]

I'm running an amd system and the upgrade was smooth. The only thing bothering me now is that an avg scan indicates that the following dlls have changed: kernel32.dll, wsock32.dll, user32.dll, shell32.dll, ntoskrnl.dll. Unfortunately, avg doesn't make it easy to tell whether or not these changes are legitimate. They should include a m5 hash check against the released windows versions. I don't understand why they don't do this. This is one of the reasons why people love Macs, your system files change, and you never know.

Thanks for posting that HP utility. I might need it for my mom.

[W2R]

I installed Service Pack 3 on my old XP home desktop computer in June. Absolutely no problems at all, other than the fact that it took 100 years to download and install, and so I was almost late in getting to the airport that day.

My agency is very conservative about upgrades. We don't get software upgrades until they are already obsolete. For example, at work we are still using the 2003 version of MS Office. Nevertheless, our IT people finally approved the Service Pack 3 for XP and installed it in mid-August. I would say that is a vote of confidence for SP3.

I prefer Vista to XP, though, so I suppose you should keep that in mind when evaluating my opinion.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JB I'm running an amd system and the upgrade was smooth. The only thing bothering me now is that an avg scan indicates that the following dlls have changed: kernel32.dll, wsock32.dll, user32.dll, shell32.dll, ntoskrnl.dll. Unfortunately, avg doesn't make it easy to tell whether or not these changes are legitimate. They should include a m5 hash check against the released windows versions. I don't understand why they don't do this. This is one of the reasons why people love Macs, your system files change, and you never know. Thanks for posting that HP utility. I might need it for my mom.

I'm pretty sure those are all legitimate changes. This upgrade has a lot more going on under the hood than microsoft would admit...