I haven’t checked Win update in a while, and now I see they are touting XP SP3. I’m always loath to try anything new from MS, even if I make a Restore Point beforehand.
They have a mess of long articles about this service pack, but hard to wade through it all. I searched but did not find any posts on this forum.
Anybody installed and tried this? If so, any significant advantages? Any big problems after installing? Anybody think it is worthwhile bothering with?
Hardly noticed any differance at all, there must be some, it’s alleged that SP3 makes XP faster but can’t say as I’ve noticed.
The most useful part of SP3 is the update rollup. Instead of installing over 100 post-SP2 updates individually, the SP3 installer includes them.
If you’ve been keeping up with the security updates all along, there’s not much new in SP3.
I’ve got SP3 on my laptop (from work) and can’t say I see a huge difference. Some things are a bit faster, some things are a bit different. A few security settings from Vista have trickled down into SP3, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near the huge deal that SP2 was. On the other hand, I haven’t had any trouble with it.
Put it on both my home and office PCs when it came out; nothing really to say that hasn’t been said.
Oh! 'cept: if your automatic updates are set to manual, make sure you reset them afterwards, or the next patch tuesday you’ll be cursing MS when your computer gets rebooted overnight. :rolleyes:
Shared experiences and advice are better done in IMHO. Moved.
samclem Moderator, General Questions
I tried SP3 on my work comptuer and what a nightmare it was. The update appeared to run fine, then I rebooted. It would go through an endless reset loop and never make it to the logon screen. Going into safe mode fared no better. I was able to find an article on how to restore it back without having to go into safe mode and was able to get back to what I had, but I am now very wary of installing it again.
I installed it successfully on my work computers and three home computers (including the Macbook, although I first needed to install an update to Bootcamp). I haven’t experienced any problems. Sadly, though, the rumors about the update speeding things up appear to be false.
Thanks, all. I’m now convinced there is no reason to bother with it.