Windows XP SP3 Creating Havoc

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.

Comments

One problem machine out of many installs

[Fez]

I have installed SP3 on several systems, and I have only had problems on one. It was my laptop, and I had known there were problems with the underlying Windows installation for months but wondered if SP3 might fix them. It did not. It ended up in an endless cycle of BSoDs from which it never did recover. I ghosted the drive, wiped it clean, and installed from an XP CD with SP3 slipstreamed. Now the laptop is running better than ever. I am not sure if SP3 has anything to do with that, or the fact that it's a fresh install with new, recent drivers. (most likely the clean install.)

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

[Sobrique]

I can honestly say that I can't actually remember an occasion where it's been easier to rebuild Solaris, than fix it. I've had quite a few varying degrees of 'fubar' but invariably the problem's I've had have either been fixed by software (in most cases, not even needing a reboot) or have been a hardware fault (which in some case _have_ needed to take the system down).

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

[Thalagyrt]

28 minutes? I've got three brand new machines running Vista and they take about 45 seconds tops from power on to login, that includes POST. Two are laptops, one's an extremely powerful audio workstation which takes about 20 seconds. You're either doing something extremely wrong, or you're lying about them being brand new and are trying to boot it up on a 486dx with 4 megs of RAM.

Re:One problem machine out of many installs

[_xeno_]

Which is why Apple did a great thing with Time Machine. That's exactly the kind of stuff you need for home users: A total nobrainer, invisible, transparent, automatic. And it allows you to restore only the one file you need, not do a full rollback.

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 on the list of Vista features.

The problem is that MS has stopped thinking about "advantage for the user" at least 10 years ago.

Except that it's only available on the Ultimate and Business editions (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

[CastrTroy]

For your roommate, Try setting the theme to "Windows Classic". It will end up looking like Windows 2000, and will speed up the interface by about 100x. I have a Vista Laptop with Celeron 1.7 and 512 MB of RAM. Before windows classic theme, it was slow beyond usable. Not it runs quite respectable. Sure it won't look pretty like Vista is supposed to, but at least you'll be able to get stuff done.

Re:One problem machine out of many installs

[nmb3000]

Oh boy. I can understand people saying they prefer Win2000 over XP, or that they have no real need to upgrade (even 7 years after the fact!). The problem is when people are so blind or ignorant that they pretend/don't see the real improvements that XP (especially with 2 service packs) has over 2000.

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 see the myriad of ways XP improves on 2000 I'm not going to try and list them all. Besides, Wikpedia already has (more or less).

By artificially limiting the number of active connections?

Except that it doesn't. XP SP2 introduced a limit to the number of half-open connections you can have open at once. The limit (10 by default) is essentially never reached during normal use. Some poorly-configured Bittorrent clients can hit the ceiling, but it isn't that hard to disable the limit if you do a quick search.

By providing more bells and whistles slowing things down?

Yes, they improved the user interface. But by gosh, you can turn it off with a single checkbox!

Better support for hyperthreading and dual core is the only thing I can think of, but even that could easily have been implemented in a service pack for W2k.

Better yet, they should have just released Service Pack 7 for Windows NT 4. After all, what improvements did Windows 2000 offer over NT4? This same discussion happens every time a new version of Windows is released. If you don't see any reason for you to upgrade, that's fine, but it doesn't mean that nobody else needs or wants to update.

Oh Yes It Will

[RupW]

Note that XP3 won't install on systems running beta IE8 It won't be offered automatically by Windows Update but it *will* install. However you then can't remove IE8 without ininstalling the service pack first.

Re:Oh Yes It Will

[nqz]

Also, the summary is misleading. If you downgrade to IE6 *before* installing SP3, then you'll be able to install and uninstall IE7 at will, after installing SP3.

Re:Oh Yes It Will

[Hyppy]

The reason for this is the way that IE7's uninstall procedures occur, and the fact that SP3 works for computers with both IE6 and IE7.

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.

Easier to read version.

[AltGrendel]

Here.

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..

[Tominva1045]

FTA: Typically, the glitches are due to conflicts with software, such as drivers, system files, or applications already resident on the user's PC. The machines arrive in a pristine state. Users then add, sometimes compliant sometimes non-compliant software, hardware, and modify the registry. There should be no surprise that issues will arise. There are less-popular operating systems with upgrade / driver issues way worse than this.

Issue Specifics

[sean_nestor]

From this article on ComputerWorld:

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.

Worked well for me

[EasyTarget]

At the risk of getting flamed to hell (this is /.)

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..

Re:installing SP3

[geekoid]

No they are not.
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.