WinXP SP3 Problems

[bevills1]

Just installed SP3 on 2 WinXP Pro systems, and one still works fine while the other has serious problems. The system still working normally is an AMD 2600 with Nvidia chipset, and the system with problems is an AMD 3400 with Via chipset. The problems include very slow boot of about 5 minutes compared to only 45 seconds for the previous SP2 boot time, Zonealarm only works when started manually, Defrag won't start, Avast won't start, Automatic Updates don't work and IE7 won't start while Mozilla SeaMonkey works normally.

Google searches finds some fixed slow boot by running Defrag, but that won't work for my situation since Defrag won't work plus I have numerous other problems. Unless there's a way to fix problems, I may have to revert to SP2. Has anybody had similar problems or know how to fix such problems?

[jman98]

I am consistently highly skeptical of Microsoft patches and only very rarely apply them when released. I have NEVER applied an SP until months after it came out and everyone who was going to get screwed over by it was already screwed over. Having said that, and being (I admit) EXTREMELY distrustful of SP3 when it came out, many months after it came I started applying it and it worked fine. Yes, it will slow down your boot time, although I'm not sure about the amount you state.

I work in IT and as a general course of action I rarely defrag. In fact, our company policy is to leave this turned off. I suspect that your hard disk may simply be going bad or as often happens, Windows has just simply turned to crap and you'll have to reinstall from scratch. I guess you could be infected with something, but probably not. I strongly doubt that SP3 itself is responsible for your problems. I'm working from memory here, but if I remember correctly HP botched some AMD installations and their install image contained some Intel specific code that it wasn't supposed to. This showed up when SP3 was installed because SP2 and below did not try to reference it. To be fair, Microsoft told HP not to do what they did and they did not follow Microsoft's advice. If your problem PC is from HP, you might do some research on SP3 problems relating to it. I seem to recall that usually this resulted in constant rebooting, but it might be worth a look.

I'm not sure that you can simply "uninstall" SP3 as I think I read that the reality is that the upgrade is one way and some parts of it can't ever really be removed after installation. You'll have to rebuild from scratch I think. Rebuilding from scratch has some advantages as in my experience Windows often just turns to crap over time. Many people just make it regular practice to reinstall Windows from scratch every year or so because of this.

[wulf109]

I saw many complaints about SP3 causing problems on some AMD systems. I've installed SP3 and there was an uninstall option in Control Panel. My AMD system runs SP3 without difficulty,an X4-620 on an AMD785 board.

[victoriabears]

I would uninstall sp3, I had to with my amd chip. nvidia video card computer, similiar problems to you, its still works fine and gets updated

[aedipuss]

I would uninstall sp3, I had to with my amd chip. nvidia video card computer, similiar problems to you, its still works fine and gets updated

last month was the end for security updates for xp sp2 computers.

[bevills1]

Ghost image of the WinXP SP2 partition that was created just before installing SP3 was restored. Then a slipstreamed Win XP SP3 CD was used to do an upgrade install which fixed all problems, and everything works normally with SP3 installed. I've no idea why installing the service pack caused so many problems or why the upgrade install worked perfectly, but I'm glad it did. Maybe victoriabears can try the upgrade install using slipstreamed WinXP SP3 CD to see if that resolves his issues.