Windows XP SP3 Released
or Microsoft finds a way to make Vista look Good

Microsoft released Service Pack 3 for Windows XP this month, we’ve had the beta version for months but we found it to be buggy and did not install it on commercially released PCs.  Now SP3 is coming down automatically from Windows update, and there are a lot of issues.

First, for people that own HP branded computers based on the AMD architecture, there is a strong chance the computer will stop working altogether.  The issue is quite technical, and there is a fix, but good luck to the average user that tries to follow the instructions found at Jesper’s Blog (Thanks to George Harding for that link).

We’ve already seen three PC’s in our shop that can no longer function under the Windows Update load created after installing the recent updates.  This bug is actually one that dates back to May of 2007, but it seems it is rearing its ugly head again, and the patches Microsoft issued back then may or may not help.  We’ve even noticed this issue is happening on PC’s that have not installed SP3, but we suspect the prerequisite upgrades that come first are the culprit.   In this situation the computer is so busy running the Windows Update service, that it can no longer do any other work, nice huh?  To get the patches and try to keep running you need to go to Microsoft’s Knowledge Base Article 927891 and follow the instructions there.  Of course since your computer doesn’t work anymore that maybe hard.  If you can be patient enough, the following steps will let you get your system back long enough to install the patches.

First open the task manager, and click on the processes tab, then resort the processes by clicking on CPU so the process with the most activity is at the top.   Find svchost.exe (there are several, you want the one running 40 to 100 percent), and click on end process.  Then go to Windows update in the control panel and disable Automatic updates.  You should be able to proceed after that.

If the patches don’t work for you, you will need to disable automatic updates, and then do your updates manually until MS finds a better fix.  There is one developer who says that SP3 corrupts the .dll files that Windows Updates needs to run, he wrote a batch file that he claims will fix the issue.  You can download it here.  After downloading, rename the extension to “.bat” and the run it.

But that’s not the best news, it turns out there are several new features in SP3 that include features of Vista, which of course reduce XP to a wallowing hog.  Features like Network Access Protection, and Black Hole Router Detection.  These services perform detection on your local area network, before Windows will let you access anything, read about them here.

In fact there are bunches of issues with SP3, the Microsoft Windows XP User Newsgroups are clogged with questions on all kinds of related problems.  One user pointed out that you can get free support from Microsoft here.  These documents all help, but let me warn you; this stuff is very technical, and it requires a bunch of time to research the issues.  Many of my users suffer from Iconitis, and there is no way they will be able to resolve these issues on their own.

Good luck from way down here….