Calling all XP users - looking for maximum compatibility

I'm going to put XP back onto my laptop. I have a TON of older games that simply run better on XP so this is my ultimate goal. Nothing but gaming for the next year.

I'm torn between going with the SP2 or SP3. I've run XP with SP 3 installed before and I honestly don't recall having any issues with it. Now for my ultimate goal of maximum compatibility I'm strongly leaning towards just sticking with SP2 and leaving it at that.

Any thoughts on this?

 

I think SP3 will be fine.

 

I have SP3 on my old notebook and all my games seem to run flawlessly on it, much better than on my W7 notebook actually.

 

I figured as much - and I suspect that this will be the general response. I'm actually at a loss as to why I got myself all worked up about going with SP3 vs. SP2.

 

Why do a lot of people ask this question? SP2 or SP3? I don't get it. Isn't it suppose to be better to go with the latest? What's wrong with it?

I remember once installing SP3 during an update and it crashed my computer completely (needed to reformat). But i haven't had a problem since.

 

I have found that many of my older games run a lot better in a virtual vmware XP environment than on my actual XP installation. Other old games run fine on my Windows 7 but I don't know which ones you are playing.

 

There are some security fixes that were included in SP3 that were not run out first as separate hotfixes, so sticking just at SP2 with no updates would miss those. Plus, I don't really see the point, unless you're going to forgo every update that's been released since XP SP2 was released, which puts you back several years and leaves you exposed to a bunch of flaws and bugs. If you instead go with SP2 and then throw on all of the updates, then you'll basically end up with the same thing - SP3 - but with a lot more work and a lot more wasted space on your hard drive taken up with the unintallation files for all those hotfixes. Finally, you'll lose all extended support, including all security support, as of July 13, 2010, which is when SP2 is [/url="http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=6794"]officially retired[/url]. By contrast, SP3 (which is the last gasp for XP), will continue to receive extended support (i.e., basically security-related fixes) through April 8, 2014. So, if you plan on sticking with XP, for more than 2 years, you're going to want SP3, or else you'll end up being virus-bait.