Question : Windows XP Service Pack 3

[Felicity]

Must I install this new update or ignore it? I dont know if it is going to cause problems or not, and also if it has any obscure problems after installation.

Some expert advice needed

Felicity

[CharlieChomper]

I could have sworn I had posted about this months ago.

Regardless, there have been some people who have installed it and don't appear to be having problems. However, there have also been a sizeable number of people going back to when it was first released to paid developers who have had nothing but problems with it, some of a very serious nature. It has been, by far, the worst (for some still unknown reason) for AMD users in terms of problems.

No one even now seems to know why it seems worse for AMD than Intel users (on a similar note, people using ATI/AMD cards also seem to be disproportionately more affected by serious problems than those using nVidia cards--again, no consensus as to why as even developers who have piece-meal access to bits of Windows sourcecode aren't certain (no one ever gets full access to the sourcecode for it--those who are privy to even partial or bits of it not only pay a rather large sum for access to even that much, in licensing fees for it, but are subject to rather stringent guidelines just for approval to get that access as well as monitoring of what they're doing with it (even then, the coding is handled in "blocks" which Microsoft pre-determines, so some companies find themselves sometimes having to license a few "blocks" in order to proceed, regardless of whether or not or how much of what's contained in some of those blocks is actually relevant to what they need or not).

It's honestly a bit of a nightmare from the development standpoint since if a problem arises (such as with this situation), it makes it that much more difficult to locate the cause of a conflict and sometimes find ways of resolving it due to not having that full access (sometimes, companies end up having to go through Microsoft and waiting for however long they choose to take in getting back to verify things since they won't release that information when needbe--and especially not for free).

However, getting back to SP3, if it tells you anything, Microsoft actually pulled it from circulation shortly after it was initially released a few months ago because of the seriousness of the problems and no one knowing exactly why or what was causing them. I was actually among the users who had that notice to update it back then, but by the next day, it was already gone--it had been pulled.

From the current look of things, they haven't made any actual changes to SP3 and are relying upon public "forgetfulness" or sometimes ignorance as to why it's made its appearance again to get people to try and install it (curiously, this time around, most of the people being targeted with the update notice are consumers/home users versus techs/IT/IS people or developers).

However, again, it does appear to at least be working for some people--but there are many more who are complaining of problems with it. I suppose you could say it's like SP1 for Vista.

[Felicity]

Thanks CC! I only got the notice this morning if I wanted to install it. When I saw that it was a Service Pack update, I chose not to install until I found out more. After reading your reply, I am not going to install it at present.

Everything is working alright on my system right now, and I really dont feel like problems.

Thanks again for helping out!

Felicity