After delaying the launch of XP Service Pack 3 for an indeterminate amount of time just a few days ago, Microsoft surprised me this morning with the message on my Everun that SP3 was ready for download on Microsoft Update. I took the plunge and after several hours of struggling and one system hang-up SP3 is now installed. Not a lot has been changed but SP3 does contain all previous patches and some smaller new features that in Microsoft’s own words, “do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system”. You can read about the changes or head over to your windows update if you want to download the 65MB patch.
XP SP3 released
Posted on 07 May 2008, Last updated on 07 May 2008 by Steve Paine
Interesting, I didn’t have any problems to download and install SP3. But then again, maybe I am just lucky not to have much troubles with MS products in general.
Same here, been running SP3 on a Sony UX, OQO and my Dell Laptop since RC2 without issue. As far as I’m aware there’s not a lot of new additions in SP3 for anyone that’s been keeping up on their updates.
Well, I guess I am one of the unlucky ones.
I tried the sp3 on my desktop, not willing to chance my notebook, and immediately had problems on the restart. Something about “Service Executable has encountered a problem and needs to close”
Restarted several times and had the same problem, then pushed on past the error message until “Explorer needs to close” and most of the screen froze up, except I had the taskmaster running, and could restart the machine from there.
Using XP.
I restored the desktop, and it is now fine.
I think I will wait a few more months before trying again. Maybe they will have removed the bug by then.