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XP SP3 Crashes Some AMD Machines
Stony Stevenson alerts us to new information on the XP SP3-induced crashes that we discussed a few days back. Jesper Johansson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft, is maintaining an ongoing log and support site for users affected by any of several problems triggered by XP3. Machines using AMD hardware, particularly HP desktops, seem to have several modes of failure; others affect Intel machines.
Rename the topic to say INTEL drivers on HP AMD systems is the cause.
The topic you have makes AMD look bad.
Why is HP useing the same basic image for there amd and intel systems?
What other driver bloat is in OEM systems?
Is INTEL coding there drivers to mess up AMD systems?
AMD legal should take a look at this.
I have SP3 running on my AMD right now and it's works 100%
I installed SP3 Sunday and three problems immediately cropped up that I haven't seen in the years since I first installed XP. First is a stop, BAD_POOL_POINTER 0x00000019 (0x00000020,0x8a231120, 0x8a231158, 0x1a070000). Second is a problem with the HID service not starting. Third is that PaintShop Pro (V7) now cancels all attempt to enter standby mode. Sigh...
I smurf everything and everything I smurf is perfect.
Apparently it's mostly AMD machines that had some Intel-specific drivers installed.
Easiest way to fix the problem, before installing SP3, open a CMD window, and type "sc config intelppm start= disabled".
It may also be worth pointing out that (according to TFA) folks had this exact same issue when service pack 2 came out, so it isn't as if HP's configuration wasn't already known to cause problems.
I got hit by this bug when the patch went live last week on Windowsupdate. As the article states, the solution in was to disable intelppm.sys from safemode. It's a lot quicker if you do it using autoruns. It's too bad this article wasn't posted last week. It would have saved me a lot of trouble shooting time.
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
Anyone who build Windows XP images that are rolled out onto both AMD and Intel machines should have long ago learned about the stop code 0x0000007E perils that come from the intelppm driver. The root of all evil here is that processors are not plug and play devices as far as XP is concerned and their associated drivers are hardcoded to start at boot time. Why the hell Microsoft has not taken the time to update intelppm.sys to check for a GenuineIntel x86 Family XX Model YY Stepping ZZ ID before touching HW specific registers is a mystery to me (I hope the conspiricy theorists amongst you will regale me with much food for thought).
That's not the only issue with SP3. One of my monitors is rotated 90 degrees (widescreen that I use upright), thanks to the ATI driver's rotate function.
After rebooting following SP3 install, all my monitors went completely berzerk. They fell back to 4 bits colors (I didn't even know there WAS a 4 bit mode), with some weird effects. Also, rotation was not possible.
It took me about an hour to find a way to bring back monitors to decent resolution and colors. I still couldn't get rotation to work, no matter how hard I tried (Combination of card, drivers, update from ATI, etc)
Then finally I google a bit and found a few forums with user complaints of the same type of problem. So I uninstalled SP3, rebooted, and voilà, everything back to normal.
Needless to say, I promply logged back into WSUS and removed SP3 from the approved for installed list.
On his blog
http://msinfluentials.com/blogs/jesper/archive/2008/05/08/does-your-amd-based-computer-boot-after-installing-xp-sp3.aspx
Johansson (partly) blames HP and other OEMs for using the same disk image for Intel and AMD PCs. He also gives some directions on fixing the problems.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Rewrite: "Over time, Microsoft Windows XP tends to mysteriously ... decrease stability and performance (in every way imaginable".
I've experienced that, many times. Windows is unstable. The instability helps Microsoft sell new versions of its operating system.
Summary of the Slashdot article about Windows XP SP3 crashes:
Microsoft has known about one of the underlying problems for a long time. See KB888372. It would have been easy to prevent the crashes merely by having SP3 installation do the work mentioned in the KB888372 article. However, apparently because of work avoidance, or an attempt to discourage people from using Windows XP, Microsoft did not do the necessary work.