is XP SP3 safe to download now?

I just did a clean install, and I'm thankful for SP3!

 

Hey Jalf...did you also download the 316Mb stand alone and burn it to CD?

Cheers,
Theo

 

Why would one do that?

 

I almost asked the same question before you, but I hesitated in case I'm missing something. Let's see what is the answer now.

 

OK. You guys have XP SP3. Have you saved it on CD for your next reinstall/reformat though to save a huge download?

Cheers,
Theo

 

I might be installing XP SP3 x86 over vista on this computer, SP3 looks good and I'm kinda tired of vista....

 

SP3 doesn't offer anything (but some non useful) more than SP2 did. BTW why are you tired of vista?

 

The download was only 66.9MB from a fresh install through WU for me. I think that's because it was only in English.

 

Did your XP install CD already have SP2 on it?

 

Yeah i know, vista works perfectly fine on my computer but ever since using Linux for a while I've grown tired of it in general and i feel i should use XP as it is kinda like Linux.

 

hey guys, i also heard that they add some new networking feature that might make your internet connection slower, or have difficulties running online games. is this true?

 

Downloaded SP3 from WU and no problems thus far. Systems 'feels' a bit snappier...but then that could just be me imagining things. The one thing I did notice, however, was that while the wifi used to snap to work as soon as booted up in SP2, under SP3 there is a delay of a few seconds - maybe 5-10 secs. Anyone else experiencing this?

I guess in a sense it wont matter in a month or so when I install Vista, which I now think I should especially after Vista SP1.

Cheers!

 

. office: 80% AMD (from Athlon to X2); mix of brands;
. zero issue with SP3, installation or running since day 1 (apart from the 2 reinstallations due to hardware issues)
. personal: 2 AMDs; zero issue

the article mentioned hp based system, but we had experienced no side effect with n5470 (old old old) and dv9000 series. Wish that they were more specifc regarding some models.

cheers ...

 

Sp3 won`t rely improve anything, it will just strenghten your security and such, by making sure you have all updates.
Sp1 on the other hand was desperately needed.
SP3 is just a small touch over SP2,but a welcomed on nonetheless.

 

Yup.

I agree. It doesn't take much to make XP as snappy as Linux is, and Linux is still a prettier OS out of Vista and XP by default. XP and Vista have so many visual styles to choose from.

My connection is actually fine. It actually seems a bit faster, but I'm sure that's a placebo effect.

 

SP3 also comes with some secret powerful built-in capabilities to you to discover, that's what Bill told me

 

It's true. Service Pack 3 limits your download speed to 14.4Kbps and gets you banned from all of your favorite online games.

There's no difference in internet connection speed. I was joking. While the SP3 copy of tcpip.sys is limited to 10 half-open connections, it only matters to people who use torrents that have modified tcpip.sys

 

I don't know about games but internet speed limitations?????? Who said such thing?

 

I've been using SP3 on a fresh install of XP Pro for 4 or 5 days now. I haven't seen any significant difference.

Some minor differences though...

-Less updates to install from Windows Update
-This might be my imagination, but pages seem to load faster.

Seems safe!

 

SP3 Works fine for me
no performance gain/loss seen

 

That's why the download was small in your case, not because fewer languages were installed. The standalone SP3 is the big file, but when installing SP3 over SP2 you only get the 66.9 file. However, I'm guessing you already knew this.

 

But SP3 should not slow down your downlink.

 

Just downloaded SP3 earlier, and I have to say that I'm pretty impressed. My bootup time has been improved by almost 5 seconds, shutdown time was cut in half, and everything just seems a lot more zippy. It pretty much feels like a fresh install on a 5 month old install. I was a little nervous after reading this thread, but all is well. Great job Microsoft.

 

Anyone have a problem with a failed install of SP3 due to an "access denied" error? I got the error on a gateway running a Celeron M that's about 3 years old, and came with XP originally. I believe that the error relates to advapi.dll, and is due to that file not being properly associated with the administrator account (also the only account).

 

I had the same issue, although the installation completed successfully. I thought it may have been my firewall software causing it.

 

Did someone have some problems with this incompatability? Or maybe they have fixed it?

 

. the incompatibility occurs only for these specific m$ DRM application users
. as of today, no fix has been released
. for non-DRM XP users, this fix will be irrelevant, if it ever becomes available.

cheers ...

 

That's what I thought, too. I ended up downloading the large 316MB package and then trying to do a naked install (no A/V, no firewall, no anti-spyware) but I still kept getting the problem. I tried 4 installs, which each took 15 minutes before it bombed out, and then took another 15 minutes uninstalling, so unless I can figure out (and fix) whatever this access problem is, I'm just going to haul off and do a clean re-install from the recovery partition, followed by an install of SP3.

 

I've read that you should login and install as Administrator, preferably in Safe mode, rather than a user with administrator privilege. I'm going to uninstall SP3 and try this myself at the weekend. I'm assuming I can just uninstall SP3 to get back to the previous state, it wont uninstall XP entirely will it?

 

That's an interesting thought - I checked to make sure that the account I was using (the only one other than "guest" on the machine) had administrative privileges - which it did. Since the system is my mother-in-law's (and thus far, far away right now until weekend after next), I'll give that a try when I get back to it.

 

Your mother in law is controlling your internet

 

That's why I disabled the remote administration of my router, and don't pass remote desktop connections to my home server from the internet. I ain't quite as dumb as I look (almost, but not quite).

 

Since you have a home server, do you also have a DNS server?

 

Shyster1 , my sugestion is also to try it in safe mode .
For some reason, a friend of mine could not install SP1 in Vista on a regular boot, so a brainstorm told me to reboot in safe mode(I was thinking video driver uninstall.*blink blink* and I went ahead with it. Worked just fine.

 

It's still a work in progress, and is largely internal (occasionally I'll enable access from the outside so that I can get back in when we go to the in-laws). For internet DNS I still go with the defaults set up when we got the cable modem (although I'm getting tired of roadrunner sending all unresolved lookups to itself). In terms of facilitating access from outside (not that there's much of it, but in future I'll probably permit some limited access by others - right now I just love having the resources of my home PC available wherever I can hook my laptop into the www ), I set up an account with DynDNS (via the Belkin router) so that I could get a stable URL that would resolve to my assigned IP - however, since I rarely, if ever, turn off the cable modem itself, the IP hasn't been reassigned in ages.

 

tried it on two laptops one with clean install.
the other, xp pro last clean install 1year.

all ok on clean install and seems to be more responsive
on the older install nothing but freezing-up (ctfmon.exe seems to be the trouble wasn't before).
and hibernation not working. will hibernate but on starting up. will shut down and restart, but nothing in error log

 

You know I did notice a weird thing too.
I turned off the computer into standby mode, and it resumed into a black screen. Although people said it might be a hardware thing,since a lot of Clevo/Sager users got it, it never hapenned to me before going to SP3.
Darn it, and standby/hibernation is all I use...

 

still trying to sort out way the hibernation is having trouble.
have cut services down to bare bones using Blackviper.com
and hibernation is working now will now back track too see which service was causing trouble

PS. both laptops acer

 

Intel or AMD?

I have notice that most issues are associated with Intel based machine, am I wrong?

I have an AMD machine and no problems art all.

 

Mine`s an INTEL, so you may be right on this one.
But that`s discrimination

 

Hahahaha, call it MAD instead of AMD then.

 

I downloaded SP3 and now I can't get into any of my folders. My screen goes completely blank and then all of my icons return to the desktop. I can't even get into 'control panel,' 'my computer,' or anything else.

 

What the heck is wrong with SP3 ? Judging from the problems, it seems like an alpha release.

 

I don`t know. It worked fine for me and all my friends
You guys should consider reinstalling everything and doing a clean upgrade to SP3...it`s the smartest way.

 

XP3 effed my desktop upp. =/

 

I installed it a day or so ago I've noticed no issues whatsoever, but I don't think I've tried hibernating yet.

 

How exactly?

 

I`m guessing effed it up pretty good.
I read a lot of horror stories, but I though those were isolated.
Seems SP3 was prematurely released for a lot of people...

 

Mine too. I lost my desktop picture and widgets. Furthermore, I can't get into any of my files. I can't get into 'my computer' or anything. My screen blanks out every time and my desktop icons completely disappear then reappear a few seconds later. None of this was happening before I added SP3.

 

well when i first installed it, it rebooted and i got a bsod after it showed bios info. it rebooted by itself and kept bsod and restarting...then it finally worked after a really long time...but now somethings wrong with my installer. i cant install or uninstall anything. in addition, some problems with my liveonecare service because it cant update. im thinking its related to the problem of installer service though