Remember my glorious post where i said that service pack 3 is great and it increased the speed of Windows XP.
I installed Service Pack 3 almost a month ago and now the conclusion is: Windows XP service pack 3 DOES speed up your XP and stuff, but overall its crap .
Heck, it has conflicts with almost all programs installed like: nero, yahoo messenger, even with Internet Explorer 6(check image). It freezes sometimes and photoshop isn’t running as smoothly as it ran on Service pack 2.
Today it pulled the plug, finally my Disciples 2 game arrived with the latest expansion, so i start installing it, everything ran fine till the end when i got the cool error message: “setup has encountered an error and needs to close” so i said to myself: maybe i messed something up, i’ll reinstall it.
I took Easy Cleaner and removed registry entries(it couldn’t be uninstalled, it said some file is missing) and i reinstalled it. Surpirse! Same error!
I went over to my other PC(i have service pack 2 there), installed it and the game got installed without any problems.
Most probably next week i’ll format the hard drive in this PC and will reinstall windows XP with service pack 2.
What i got from installing service pack 3:
- increased speed of the OS
- lots of errors
- incompatibility with softwares
- killed lots of my neurons because i got pissed because of it every day
If you want to enjoy the “great enjoyment” service pack 3 will offer you feel free to download it and install it on your PC.
Hello, and welcome to my blog. My name is Tom and i am the owner of thaslayer.com. I'm 18 years old and currently in college, but also work as a freelance web designer. As you can see in my portfolio i mostly design wordpress themes, but i can handle any other design related job
Posted: Jan 4th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Hello i am speaking from The small island of Cyprus. One month ago i have installed the service pack 3 .I can say that i am really happy.it did speed up my computer without any conflicts.i know that this service pack is better than sp2.
Posted: Jan 4th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
I dont know what happend with my friend that says that he has a lot of problems.i had some problems with Xp and then when i installed Sp3 everything was ok.
Posted: Jan 14th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
I installed XP SP3 and everything is ok.. better and faster
Posted: Jan 17th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
I have to agree with this post, as I have had no end of hassle since installing sp3, and I have found the exact same, my previously bullet proof stablility is now shot, and the PC keeps freezing, and throwing up random application ‘needs to close’ errors. Sometimes the PC will stay up fine, other times, it will error applications at start-up, other times, mid gaming….
Doign my head in tbh.
Posted: Jan 17th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Can this service pack be safely removed, without corrupting the OS installation? As I have it installed on a raid 0 configuration, with 2×500gb discs.
Posted: Jan 17th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
well you have the UNINSTALL button in the add/remove programs, but i wouldn’t trust it
just backup your files on a separate partition and format the drive on which the OS is installed
cheers,
Tom
Posted: Jan 27th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Keep in mind too that RC3 is still a beta product; not something you want to install on your main system unless you don’t mind having problems. If you don’t have backups, I would wait till it’s official.
That said, I’ve had pretty good results with it. It is noticeably faster. Not quite as fast as 2003 Server (that’s after “tricking it out” to work as a desktop, not a default install), but pretty close. Once SP3 is official I may have to get rid of my 2003 install and go back to XP. There are a few bugs to work out yet; not going to keep the beta around.
On the other hand, Vista is still pretty disappointing with the SP1 beta. It’s not bad on my system, but the minor improvements don’t justify the performance hit. (Not a little hit from say 2K to XP, but a pretty big one, and that’s on a dual core system with 4GB of memory.)
Posted: Feb 25th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Great! i hope it speeds up my laptop cause im switching back to xp, vistas network connections are crap and drops me out all the time and vista just eats too much ram memory on boot and while tasking,not only that but shadow copy is ridiculous for hd memory usage,and the digital rights management is the worst! ..windows xperience is the best. bar none.
Posted: Mar 18th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Installed service pack3 rc1
mostly worked perfect, but internet explorer does not start always.
checked and running in background 3 times or more.
Tried to uninstall, after 1/2 hours got message file not found
Anyone suggestions how to get rid of the rc1 version and install the RC2 version
Posted: Mar 19th, 2008 at 4:44 am
backup the important data from the partition where windows is located and format it
setup windows xp SP2 and don’t install SP3 until the final version is out
cheers,
Tom
Posted: May 8th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
We’ve been testing and updating our customers pc’s since the final release of xp sp3 and we’re very happy with the new security features and the speed improvement of the system. it’s about time.
Posted: May 12th, 2008 at 12:30 am
That’s good to know PC tech…
I have not installed SP3 yet.. I wanted to research first before putting myself though the hassle of having to reformat. I remember SP2 would cause problems when being installed if Windows had issue already.
Based on past experiences working on PCs I would probably reinstall my Windows XP before applying the new SP3 to avoid any problems that may arise do to older applications or any bugs that are not noticeable with SP2.
I haven’t reinstalled my XP in over 2 years.. I guess I have an excuse to do so!
Posted: May 12th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
grrrrrrrrr, i just had this sinking feeling while i considered installing.
conflicts, error messages, freezeups, incomprehensible trouble with anything plugged into usb ports (!i know this sounds like it must be some other dumb thing, but of course it started suddenly for the first time ever the morning after)
and i am positive the sp3 “update now” did NOT say beta anywhere on it.
in desperation i sys restored to the day before, and it ran a copious uninstall of “mystery files” about 60 meg worth. when i went to add and remove programs on a later day, still going nuts with errors, frozen mouse, off/on/offline, messenger bounces…
no program appeared there called sp3 or anything like it.
searching file by file for anything that was installed that day, or modified.
Posted: May 14th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Hi guys, all I want to say is if you are using a pirated copy then you will definitely land up with lots of problems, so please use the legal copy of windows and have fun, and also in case if you encounter in any problem please do fresh installation of windows and then install the service pack 3. I hope this will clear to all.
Posted: Jun 8th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
the thing is that ive never had these probs with service pack 2 either and I just dont understand why its causing me probs and it shouldnt be at all.
i think its just gon be better to go back to service pack 2 period, i mean, my system entirelly ran better than what it is now.
and that when I fire up my computer, it takes for ever after I get to my desktop and to even do simple things of getting onto internet explorer and here on messenger and that tooo alone is another story and then after a few minutes, my computer finally clears up and its like its just tryin to wake up like its had its burst of caffene and just jitters right along ya know??? I really think that mircrosoft screwed up with this new service pack 3 update and that service pack 2 is just way better and for now on, I dont think I’ll ever be updating again from microsoft specially that I found out that possibly that service pack 3 is a possible 3rd party issue and not meant to work with programs on the computer period and just slows things down and takes for ever just to catch up even with a system thats got 2gigs of ram which …… come one now, thats messed up. but as for that, i am thouroughly not happy with service pack 3 at all and wont ever go back to it no matter what people say.
Posted: Jun 18th, 2008 at 1:59 am
thanks, great post, installed it and everything worked fine..
Posted: Jun 24th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I installed it, it took forever to install. I didn’t have any of the compatibility issues but once installed it didn’t want to work! My computer froze and it did not want to get online, so my husband had to uninstall it. My mom had the exact same problems as we did, and she had no compatibility issues as well. Her computer froze up and she couldn’t get online. So I don’t know what the problem with it was. I was really look forward to all the fixes and some of the features that were added on. We both Have Windows XP home edition with Service Pack 2 and the manufacured computers are both DELL. So if anyone has any suggestions why it maybe having these problems please let me know!!
Posted: Jul 30th, 2008 at 11:06 am
My wife and i also have had problems with SP3, errors galore, as died hard gamers, we have the latest hardware / high-end rigs, have had no problems with conflicts under SP2 until a recent patch, prior to SP3, where we noticed a steep drop off in performance.
Sadly, we cant help but wonder if this is Microsoft’s way of forcing people into Vista or the new OS due for announcement soon, as we have no trust in Microsoft due to their lack of Transparency .
Great to hear that some users are having no problems, and could all stem from system specs, however, not many posts that mention “no problems with SP3″, have stated what they use their comps for e.g. Games, 3D applications, Web Surfing, Office etc.
Any new information on Performance issues with SP3 from users would be greatly appreciated, as Microsoft cant give us any explanation for these issues, after speaking with them on the phone and online via email etc, except to say we need to pay them for anymore info on SP3?! (nice people)
Good Luck,
Good Gaming
Posted: Aug 4th, 2008 at 1:40 am
The latest Windows XP service pack 3 causes problems with Microsoft Internet Explorer such as causing it to crash and causing problems with trying to upgrade to IE7. It also kills the remote desktop connection feature and I have been suspicious of it cauing various other errors! I know because I work on computers for a living and have tried both SP3 updates and manually installing updates and have had problems only with Windows XP service pack 3! Great going Microsoft!!
Posted: Aug 5th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Hi all, 98% of the posts r correct. The SP3 is just crap. I wasted my time downloading it and installing it. Both my laptops went phut !!!!!! Lucky enough had made the an entire backup of both the hard disks onto an external hard disk. Main problems were Internet Explorer would open then kaboom it would freeze, compatibility issues with some S/W, driver problems etc. Gave me a nightmare fixing it. Finally decided to just format and reinstall with SP2. Back to normal. One good thing : speeds up the OS but messes up the rest. And last but not the least talking to Microsoft has been so helpful. They just would’nt bat an eyelid to look at ur problem without speaking regarding their monetary gains. Very very lovely people indeed.
ADVICE : Stick to SP2 folks and inform Microsoft to roll up SP3 & shove it up their ***.
Posted: Aug 15th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
hi every one i want to say that when i instituted the sp3 onto my computer my computer started to act real funny and have a lot or problems like the blue screen of death.it’s got to a stag where now it wants to just reinstated windows xp so i put in the disk and it says 34 mins reaming never 34 before that the computer caches how can this be fix
thanks guys
Posted: Aug 19th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Service Pack 3 is really crappy! It let install 3 game but thats it. Now its screwed up. Everytime… BLUE SCREEN. Then I have to wait 2 hours to turn it back on I never had a problem wit Service pack 2. Yes I used to have computer problems. That was with my old on. Now I just spent 1,000 Dollars on a new computer. Now it is worse!