Windows XP SP3 Creating Havoc 742
ozmanjusri writes "According to Information Week, within hours of its wide availability Windows XP SP3 had drawn hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their computers. One user said in a Microsoft newsgroup: 'I downloaded and installed [the SP3] package for IT Professionals and Developers on one of my computers. Now I can't get the computer to boot. I don't think Microsoft should have made this a critical update.' Other sites including IT Wire are also reporting problems, which include include random reboots or the inability to boot at all." Note that XP3 won't install on systems running beta IE8; and after a successful SP3 install users will no longer be able to downgrade from IE7 to IE6.
One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Informative)
The BSoD/stop errors I received pointed to a driver issue with DEP, but without being able to boot even in safe mode there was no easy way to debug the problem. I could have tried a repair install, but I felt more comfortable starting from scratch.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
If you suspect the SP won't take, just go straight to slipstream, wipe, and reinstall.
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Microsoft even warns quite emphatically not to install service packs on a system that may have viruses, spyware, or any other system problems. The anatomy of a MS service pack is not designed to solve problems, it's designed to update OS components. I'll be the first to admit I make a lot of money supporting Microsoft products, but obviously the design of MacOS and Linux are technically superior when it comes to u
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree.
I use linux not Windows, but this is ridiculus!
WinXP sp3 is causing hundreds of complaints?
HUNDREDS?
How many millions of XP users were automatically upgraded to sp3?
Hundreds are complaining. That is a pretty good outcome.
There are plenty of things to bash MS about.
This seems like a non-issue to me.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:4, Interesting)
A repair install would have probably taken about an hour, give or take.
As I said, I felt more comfortable starting from scratch and going that route, because I figured it would be the most trouble-free in the long run. A repair install may have had it up and running much sooner.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:4, Insightful)
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I always wonder, how did this become an acceptable state of affairs in IT?
The dominant OS in the world easiest way to fix is by re-installing!! Just seems weird, and describes yet another problem with the computer industry.
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Hmm. Why?
Anyone is free to offer whatever product they want, even as inadequate as Windows. The industry, on the other hand, could have been more selective.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why, YES, with a proper network install server, install configuration, binary server, and network mounted home directories, Linux is much easier to reinstall than repair. The same can be said for Windows (XP or newer), Solaris, and many *nix systems. I can fix a system during lunch and a meeting.
Locally stored user data and locally installed applications is a completely different item. This is subject to the speed and
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Interesting)
It's frustrating, yes. But I don't think the problem is the product, nor the industry. The real problem is that operating systems are complex beasts. The consumer has spoken quite clearly that the most important thing is new features and functionality, not stability. Someday hopefully we'll have our cake and eat it too, but for the time being I don't think we'll be getting away from these issues.
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With the low costs of portable storage devices, I keep one with a clean OS handy. If the internal system fails, the computer can be re-started from the external fire wire drive. If there is an internal drive software failure, the disk repair program will usually take care of the problem. If not, the user data can b
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about "acceptable" but it became a necessary way of operating when Microsoft switched Windows away from INI files to the registry. Windows 3.x systems had maybe 5 or 10 INI files that mattered (i.e. that you had to hand-tweak from time to time). Each rarely had more than 100 lines in it. Maybe a couple hundred thousands bytes all in. And if we needed a driver, it was usually a driver _file_ (except video drivers).
Today systems are ridiculously complicated. Windows 3.x would not even load, let alone run, if it was installed on a partition with the number of files an XP system has (over 100,000). Just the number of files alone would sink it (try it with more than about 60,000 files if you don't believe me).
On the other hand, install systems have kept pace with the complexity. Instead of shovelling 7 floppies (Windows 3.x) into a PC in 15 to 20 minutes, we have CD (XP) and DVD (Vista) installs that take the same (order of magnitude) time to install, despite 10 to 100 to 1000 times the increase in complexity. So, re-installing wins.
With DOS, we knew our systems down to the individual file level.
With Windows 3.x, we knew our systems down to the INI level.
With XP, we know our systems down to the Windows Update/services.msc level.
With Vista, we just know our system sucks.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:4, Interesting)
Still I have to do a complete reinstall if I want to get this SP working I'm afraid...
Not unique to Windows (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you read some of the news reports about foreclosed home being stripped of plumbing, wiring, appliances, fixtures, even doors and windows? Some (many?) of these are proving to be cheaper to just rip it down and build new when the market comes back. Maybe even cheaper than waiting for someone to start up a meth lab and blow the whole thing to toothpicks.
It's *usually* faster
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
But what's that? A bomb icon? Extensions conflicts? Co-operative multitasking... networking and printing from the... Chooser? Ahhhhhh!
Maybe the more complicated install is worth it after all
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Interesting)
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Interesting. I grew up using DOS/Windows and Unix/Linux and absolutely *hated* pre-OS X Mac for this very reason.
On the Mac, all kinds of stuff happened automagically in the background--but when it didn't work, you were screwed because there was not much you could do to fix the problem.
Then Microsoft started implementing brain-dead automagic into Windows, Apple released Mac OS X (based on BSD) and the table
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Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
If you do a good job of screwing the system, it still can be quicker to start from scratch. Whenever I have a huge upgrade on a development machine, I tend to start from scratch, to hopefully avoid the problems that accumulate over time.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Informative)
The same cannot be said for Windows systems I've worked on - the time and effort involved in troubleshooting is much much higher than the effort involved in a rebuild.
*shrug*. You _can_ get utterly hosed on either, but Solaris is still better at keeping entropy at bay.
Although I _have_ done a 'wipe and restart' on a shared filesystem though on a few occasions, where whole departments have denied responsibility a massive dogpile of disorganised data. A 'restructure and clean' (tell 'em it's being ugpraded) works well for making them figure out what they actually need to keep/need backed up/are willing to pay for, and what they're not :)
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't tell you how many times I've had to reinstall windows on my PCs.. I've completely lost count.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that MS has stopped thinking about "advantage for the user" at least 10 years ago.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Informative)
Vista has this feature, there's a tab called "Previous Versions" in the properties dialog for files and folders. Microsoft calls this feature Shadow Copy [microsoft.com] on the list of Vista features.
Except that it's only available on the Ultimate and Business editions [microsoft.com] (footnote D as of the time I linked it). Home users don't get it.
But it's a great feature (despite the crappy slow and flaky UI), and one that should be available on all versions of Vista if Microsoft was intelligent and not trying to nickel-and-dime their customers. It's the only feature of Vista I've ever used that made me think "I'm glad I'm using Vista, I'd have been screwed in XP."
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but the difference with Windows is that you pay a small fortune for it. And if it's broke, you can't just poke at the code to fix it.
With Vista, all of this has become even more pronounced. Not only was it terribly late anyway, but it was shipped in this really rather broken state. Given that it took them five years to deliver it, waiting another 6 months to deliver something that actually works would have gone a long way to giving Microsoft some credibility. Instead, now they have next to none, with the result that everyone - from the student off to university right up to massive multinational enterprises - is avoiding Vista like the plague.
I think the root of the problem is that Microsoft has lost its way. Completely. Back when they had someone to compete with, the releases came thick and fast, as with Internet Explorer when they were out to crush Netscape. But now, for whatever reason, the company has ground to a halt. Apologists are talking about Windows 7, about eschewing backwards compatibility, a break from the past, a leaner, more modular system - in short, everything Windows Vista was supposed to be. But it won't happen.
Face it, Microsoft is dying.
(Yes, I admit, that last line is a little dramatic. But these days it has an eerie ring of truth to it...)
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, Vista kinda sucks, but all Windows versions kinda suck.
I'm not sure I see how your post qualifies as less of a microsoft-bashing post than the one you were responding to. Why must you say such negative things about the products of a poor, defenseless, beleaguered little 800lb gorilla!?
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Interesting)
I am also not an apologist, and you can flame me to ashes for saying this, but I haven't had very many problems at all with Vista (outside of them releasing updates that make the cracks stop working).
The biggest issue with it for normal end users, not
A few disclaimers:
1 - I am a gamer, had a system that was well beyond the req's that they should have used in the first place, and it runs fine.
2 - I never pay for anything except online games(flame me for that too if you want), so the DRM stuff doesn't matter to me.
3- I totally agree that you would be out of your mind to install it in a business environment in it's current state, and with the current cost of the machines you would need to run it.
4- The fact that they are planning on discontinuing XP is preposterous. When you release a new version of anything users should want to upgrade, not be forced to.
Absolutely no interest in a "but M$ is evil" or a "but you don't realize that it does xyz" argument, just giving my experience with Vista.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Interesting)
Vista isn't that bad, but contrary to the marketing materials, you will need a pretty good system to run it. My wife's system runs it just fine, and she loves it. The games she plays on it run fine, but it was a fairly high end system when she bought it, and isn't that bad at the moment. The only change she had to make in going to Vista was going from 1GB to 2GB of RAM.
My system, on the other hand, is falling to the bottom of the totem pole; and Vista is horrible on it. I can play most games on it with reasonable graphics settings, in XP. When I tried Vista on it, many of the games became unplayable at the exact same video settings. So, I'm back on XP (haven't installed SP3 yet).
In all, the biggest problem I see with Vista is that it does take up more resources, and is really meant for newer systems. If you have a good system, you can have all the flashy Vista interface. If you have a marginal system already, stick with the Crayola interface in XP.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Interesting)
The one thing that Vista does that constantly pisses me off is that "Shell Folders" in Explorer occasionally move around in the file system, even though they always show up in the same place in Explorer.
The other night she went to download a video from a web site, and clicked open instead of save by mistake, so after about 30 minutes of progress bar, the video starts playing in Media Player. I'm like, no problem, it's in TEMP, so I'll just copy it to the desktop before WMP closes. So I open a prompt (I'm a command line bigot, so sue me) and cd to the user directory to find Local Settings, and its not there anymore. This time its under Pictures, last time it was under Favorites, who knows where it will be next time.
I'm sure this is a defensive measure to give viruses and trojans a harder time finding the stuff that they scan for, but it pisses me off when need to actually accomplish something.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Interesting)
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I am, however, an asshole and I do have a big mouth after about 3 whisky and cokes so you were half right.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:4, Insightful)
I really prefer 2000 over XP even now. But I tend to use XP, because of particular needs: my laptop is a Tablet PC; there's no "Win2k tablet edition." My desktop is shared with my girlfriend; 2000 doesn't have fast user switching. It really sucks, because I'm morally opposed to activation.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as most users were concerned, Win98SE was the previous version of Windows.
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In what way was XP an improvement over Windows 2000?
In a word? Multimedia. In more words? Security, GPO, native hardware support, support for newer versions of IE, Remote Desktop, etc. If you really don't se
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Some people still swear at Windows 2000 to this day, so I don't doubt that there will be people who will swear at Windows XP several years from now anyway.
There....fixed those typos for ya.....
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
I had vista on my work laptop for 6 months, I kept hoping that SP1 would fix everything.. after installing it.. I downgraded to XP.
The result?
Battery life went from 1h 40min to 2h 30minutes.
The system now boots to usable state in 3 minutes. With vista, it took 28 minutes to actually get to login screen. After logging in it took another 5 minutes to actually do anything.
I don't have constant UAC annoyance (yes I know that can be turned off, but it was touted to be one of the good new features)
I can actually use 3 legacy corporate programs we need daily which didn't run on vista.
You might assume the laptop was old, but no. It's brand new! Yet my home laptop 4 years old running XP felt 3x faster than the new dual core machine with 3gb memory!
Under the line:
I can get more work done therefore costing less to my employer!
As for w2k, we still run it on few computers. Why upgrade since it works flawlessly and those machines aren't connected to public network.
I don't see any reason for vista deployment. It's like Windows ME all over again.
Only good thing with vista is downgrade right to xp from business and ultimate.
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:4, Informative)
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Something in that standard setup really breaks down vista, since that workstation isn't the only vista machine suffering from the same symptoms.
Most problems witnessed seem to relate to symantec, office 2007 and sql server.
Either would randomly freeze and turn the system inoperable.
The system reliability monitor kept running around 5-7 days uptime b
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
XP was considered bloat and XP doubled the minimum requirements from 2000 Pro.
Vista quadruples the minimum XP processing requirement, octuples XP minimum RAM, decuples the minimum HDD free space, and adds a new requirement for video cards.
On top of all of that, XP and 2000 were essentially the same kernel. There weren't many compatibility issues, and users weren't faced with drastic UI changes.
So, was XP twice as "good" as 2000? Maybe, so people switched. Is Vista ten times as "good" as XP? Plus IT support costs? No, so people aren't switching.
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Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly this whole "Vista is maturing" rubbish doesn't work. Vista is not a child, pet or a plant. It's not expected to grow. It should work out of the box.
Like I mentioned earlier, this mentality that it's acceptable to release a bit of software that costs hundreds of dollars in a broken state is why PC software in general sucks.
Console gaming was always superior to PC gaming in terms of quality because there wasn't any patching. They had to get it right. Where as PC game markets just had to get it sort of right. Now console gaming has the ability to patch games and, no surprise at all, the quality is dropping.
There is no reason software companies, especially one as large and as rich as Microsoft can't get it right on the first go.
Tell me this, are you willing to by a car, dvd player or microwave that only sort of works out of the box and the manufacturer promising to fix it at a later date? If not, then why is it acceptable for Microsoft to do this?
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:4, Insightful)
Claiming Slashdot has an irrational hatred of Microsoft is very facile and for some reason seems to be a rather popular thing to do nowadays (there's generally at least three comments to that effect on every MS-related article), but have you ever stopped to think that maybe people have a real *reason* for their dislike?
Re:One problem machine out of many installs (Score:4, Interesting)
Does Vista still allow Remote Registry editing by hackers over the internet? Does Vista still have ActiveX? Does Vista still allow people to remotely run processes under a different user's credentials?
Vista also released a huge security vulnerability into the wild that can never be taken back. Insert a Vista install DVD into a computer and boot into it. With the recovery console you can have full access to a system's hard drive without administrator password now.
I know you can do the same with a Knoppix CD, but now the exploit is something more visible to the average user.
Oh Yes It Will (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh Yes It Will (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh Yes It Will (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oh Yes It Will (Score:5, Informative)
When you install IE7, it creates a backup of all IE6-related files that it replaces, in order to replace them if the user uninstalls IE7.
When you upgrade to SP3, it replaces files that are used by both IE6 and IE7, most of which have different versions depending on which browser is currently being installed.
If you were to uninstall IE7 after updating to SP3, then it will revert to the pre-SP3 binaries that were copied during initial setup.
Now, I agree that the SP3 setup should be intelligent enough to identify and replace IE6 files located in the IE7 uninstall folder, but honestly it was probably a very low priority.
The fix? Uninstall IE7, install SP3, then re-install IE7. Not an easily automated task, but thats what needs to be done if you want to be able to uninstall IE7 in order to revert to IE6 in the future.
Either way, its not a massive conspiracy. You can put your tin-foil hat away today.
Remember a bad Kathleen Turner movie (Score:5, Interesting)
One could make a similar statement about SP3.
Not that I'm a MS fan-boy, far from it.
Re:Remember a bad Kathleen Turner movie (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry. I did not feel that was the message you were trying to put across at all.
Your message was clear and unambiguous. You're a fan-boy of murder for hire.
Re:Remember a bad Kathleen Turner movie (Score:5, Funny)
Nudge Nudge Wink Wing (Score:5, Funny)
So the solution is fairly obvious - if you can't improve Vista, you can make XP worse. That way, people know they're going to be dissatisfied with your product from the get-go, but at least they'll buy the latest one.
Re:Nudge Nudge Wink Wing (Score:5, Funny)
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the theory- http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html [auckland.ac.nz]
the goal http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/10/microsoft-vista-drm-tech-security-cz_bs_0212vista.html [forbes.com]
a practical consequence -http://davisfreeberg.com/2008/01/03/bad-copp-no-netflix/ [davisfreeberg.com]
And:
broken sound API's (change for change sake)
Lack of drivers for older hardware
Useless on older machines with just 512 MB of RAM
too many versions
SP1 released just last month
Did I mention the DRM? http://practical-tech.com/e [practical-tech.com]
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Time to upgrade (Score:4, Insightful)
Access Denied!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Easier to read version. (Score:4, Informative)
It has a banner add at the top, but at least it doesn't have the rest of the cruft on the page.
People mess with thier own machines.. (Score:5, Informative)
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All too often machines arrive with a whole slew of crap-ware pre-installed. These programs are generally either outdated by the time the user gets the PC (ie Real-Player et al), or just half-assed software written by a 2-bit audio-chipset-maker. These programs are rarely tested properly or in a timely manner when it comes to Service Packs, and there's no way MS could ever account for them.
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Slackware, I'm looking at you.
Just a quick thank-you (Score:5, Funny)
Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
The Microsoft Patch Cycle (Score:4, Interesting)
(X * 3)/100 = T
T = Time patch is ready for release to public (from microsoft release date, in months).
This puts Service Pack 3 general release for February 2009, and i'm not touching it until then.
I love the /. bias (Score:5, Insightful)
No news when it's released.
News again when some minority of systems fail the SP3 installation.
I love that Microsoft is held to 100% success rates, too. 100%. Even though there are millions of systems with trillions of potentially screwed up configurations to miss in testing, 100%.
Unless testing for SP3 was going to take hundreds of years, stuff was going to slip through.
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But I'm sorry, I am just not buying this "there are too many configuration combinations to test" argument either. Not when we are talking about the third service pack of an operating system that has been running mainstream for 6 years. Not when it would prevent a computer from booting at all.
Hell, at this point in XP's life cycle, there should not have been any service pack at all. All Microsoft should be doing for XP is
Issue Specifics (Score:5, Informative)
According to Johansson, there appears to be two separate issues. One affects only AMD-equipped PCs sold by Hewlett-Packard Co. "The problem is that HP, apparently along with other OEMs, deploys the same image to Intel-based computers that they do to AMD-based computers," said Johansson. "Because the image for both Intel and AMD is the same, all have the intelppm.sys driver installed and running. That driver provides power management on Intel-based computers. On an AMD-based computer, amdk8.sys provides the same functionality."
Running the intelppm.sys driver on an AMD-powered PC isn't normally an issue, but on the first reboot after a service pack installation, it causes "a big problem," Johansson said. The machine either fails to boot or crashes and immediately reboots.
The other problem, according to Johansson, also seems to affect only AMD machines, and involves an error message indicating trouble with the PC's BIOS. Johansson said that the ensuing recommendation to update the BIOS is "most likely not your problem," but said that the problem may be isolated to a specific motherboard. "Possibly, it is related to computers with the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard in them," he said.
They should put this in the readme.txt (Score:4, Insightful)
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In this case it seems that HP and others took disk images from Intel machines and copied them onto AMD machines. That circumvents any test the driver developer might have implemented in the setup program. At best, the driver will re-check for the correct chipset at startup (and what then? Refuse to run and leave the
Lost TCP/IP on my install yesterday (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lost TCP/IP on my install yesterday (Score:5, Funny)
-w
Worked well for me (Score:5, Informative)
SP3 actually improved my old thinkpad. The XP copy on it was really struggling after years of being used as the 'windows toy'. No media (my bad) so I've never reinstalled it. I allowed SP3 on with some trepidation, but the end result is that the machine is a darned sight more spry (fast and responsive) than it was before. I think the installer basically did a good job of repairing the OS while patching it.
I was pretty surprised.. it's pretty rare that anything from Redmond makes me feel that it's an improvement..
no IE6? (Score:4, Insightful)
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And as you imply if you have to run an old insecure browser for some specific task using a VM is probablly a good idea.
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I've had the same issue with older Compaq and HP iLo ports. The last firware releases for the product will at least let it work with IE 6. In particular, I had an iLo port that firefox wouldn't go near, but after a firmware flash, IE6 gave me a quick nag screen about an expired cert, then connected like the insecure little whore that it is.
Finally they made XP secure (Score:4, Funny)
I'm glad MS figured out how to secure Windows totally.
Failed to work for me.... (Score:3, Informative)
The SP downloaded and began the install just fine. Ran all the way to the end, which took over 2 hours, and then popped up a dialog after reboot that the installation "...has failed and will be rolled back. This is a two-step process..."
Pressed OK and it took about 45 minutes and a reboot to finish. After boot, I got the "your system has encountered a serious error" dialog. So far, everything SEEMS normal, but I haven't done much as this is my 3rd PC, hence his starring role as "SP3 sacrificial lamb".
Disappointed, but not particularly surprised this SP has issues.
I am happy with it (Score:4, Insightful)
omg (Score:3, Funny)
Fucking Microsoft.
*shakes fist*
new plan (Score:3, Funny)
Re:installing SP3 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:installing SP3 (Score:4, Informative)
You should wait to see what happens on other computers before doing any OS upgrade.
If you are a single user, wait, if you are a company put it on test machines.
Your an idiot for not understanding the the PC upgrade history is far from stellar. Yes, SP2 was fine, but that's hind sight.
"If it ain't broke don't fix it"
That's exactly how you should deal with computers.
Re:One of the finest pieces of software ever made (Score:5, Funny)