Windows XP SP3 Install Woes

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I know when SP3 started to become available, there was an issue as well. I’m not sure if this is fixed now or not. If you install SP3 on a cleanly installed SP2 without updating the Windows Installer version, XP refused to to any other updates after that point, neither automatic nor manual. You could manually download files and install them, but the updater was kaput.

There is a work around, which I don’t have at hand. I didn’t find out about the problem and fix until after I reinstalled XP SP2 for a second time, refused the SP3 and updated the 100+ items.

Despite being 16, I would classify myself as an experienced Windows user and enjoy marvelling over their flaws and mistakes. About a month ago, I had to re-install XP and perform that tedious task of instaling updates. I installed the service pack and got the annoying speechmarks saying that auto update manager was disabled. I turned it on, but for the series of events that followed, you will see why I will never turn it on again…

The very first time it installed a new update, it decided to include some hardware support for me in the form of a sound card driver. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but my one worked, theirs didn’t. They removed my ully operational sound driver and put their non-functional one in!

You may be wondering why I have wondered off of the set track, but the answer is simple. I had this happen to me twice, and only ever after the Service pack 3 installs. Every time I installed updates in the time before Service Pack 3, I never had this problem.

Has anyone had this monumental messup happen to them?

This article was incredibly vague, confusing, and didn’t even link to the script the article is focused on.

No problems, so far. I just downloaded the SP3 file and ran it. I didn’t disable anything. I didn’t make any registry changes. It went surprisingly smoothly.

It would be nice to know what percentage of folks are having some sort of problem with the update vs. those with no problems, and whether there is some common cause of these problems.

Heh, I’ll bet Microsoft would like to know that, too.

i installed SP3 and the only issue i have is my Arial Black font. i don’t think i ever had problems listed in this post… as far as i know, anyways.

[...] Windows XP SP3 Install Woes ~ Chris Pirillo [...]

I installed one of the release candidates, but I’m not sure if it has automatically updated yet. The system information simply says “Service Pack 3″, and doesn’t give any version details. I never had to do anything complicated like Wayne describes. I guess I’m lucky.

I encountered no problems. But, I had slipstreamed it and did a fresh install. I have noticed no problems whatsoever. And did not have to do anything special.

where do we start.

It breaks our CRM package (saleslogix) and it breaks our firewall console application (watchguard) – both of which aren’t really the fault of MS since they didn’t develope those apps and can’t be to blame for any shoddy coding on their part.

I have seen it roll something into the endless reboot.

The updates you mentioned, I’ve not had to do any of them, but then I don’t use XP home for anything because I refuse to use windows cripple.
If you’re using home, why couldn’t you just reboot into safe mode, add yourself to the local admin group and reboot? admin rights without buggering about with the registry and patches. (see why I hate home? you shouldn’t have to boot into safe mode to deal with the admin account.. pressing and holding down ctrl+alt-del for a few seconds should give you the ability to type in the admin account and log on as that)

If you’re running xp pro, then you can either right click or shift+right click and select “run as” and log on as the local admin.

Out of three machines that I updated with SP3 I had not a single problem on any of them. All update installed smoothly and without the problems Wayne mentioned. It works great.

hmm, seems like SP3 is still not available on in my language (Chinese Traditional) it seem not to show up on the Windows Update, but after a bit of searching, i went the the English one and changed the language, then it worked…

i guess that Windows Update, as buggy as it is, will not work… lets hope SP3 fixes that…
every time i try running Windows Update, the svchost.exe will like go nuts, and it never accomplishes anything…

downloading sp3 right now… 300mb seems like alot…

One of SP3’s biggest flaws causes massive “blue screen of death” errors on AMD based systems because it installs INTELPPM.SYS; the power management driver for Intel chipsets.
HP has published a convoluted article on fixing it; but, I have a simpler solution….
Get DriverManager ( http://www.majorgeeks.com/DriverManager_d865.html ), boot into Safe Mode, and use it to uninstall the INTELPPM.SYS.
Here is HP’s technote on their method: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?docname=c01457284&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

I thought SP3 was great, but the final release had one major problem that I couldn’t ignore: SP3 wouldn’t let me authenticate against a remote VPN server.

A lot of what I do involves remoting into a client’s server to maintain their website and intranet. Not having the ability to connect to their network was a dealbreaker for me.

I’ve installed SP 3 on probably about a dozen machines, all have went smoothly until yesterday.

Yesterday I experienced the “you must be an administrator” problem that Wayne did, but after restarting and giving the install another shot, it worked.

BUT, after installing, restarting, and running windows update again, I got a 0×80072EE2 error. To fix it I had to add update.microsoft.com and download.windowsupdate.microsoft.com to the trusted sites for IE.

Other than this little snafu SP3 has not posed a problem to any of the machines I service…

My father bought a computer magazine and on a DVD that came with it was SP3, so he asked me to install it for him. It was just a matter of few clicks, everything went smoothly. Then on the day after his wireless adapter stopped working – and the error message made very little sense. In the end, the issue was that because the drivers he had installed were not signed, there were some permission issues. Thankfully, signed drivers were available online, even though it’s a quite old machine, but I can imagine this not being the case for everybody.

As with any large service pack from Microsoft, it is always best to integrate the pack (slipstream) it into the previous version of the product. There are good guides/tools available on the web to do this easily. Then do a complete fresh format and install with the updated SP3 disc you’ve created (there’s guides for that too). I’ve used this method on four very different desktops and three laptops now, with no problems. If you can install XP, this is definately the way to go.

I’ve installed SP3 several times with no problem. Of course you have to have at least an account that is in the Administrators group. Sounds like Wayne may of had some other existing problems.

You can also hit Control-Alt-Delete twice at the Windows welcome screen to get the normal login prompt. Then you can type in Administrator for the account and the password.

After installing XP SP3, Office 2007 slowed down to a crawl that would envy a snail. Once the update was uninstalled, all was well again.

I am thinking about installing XP3 on one of my machines. Having read about issues that people have run into, it is very helpful when people like Wayne share his experience and you write a post about it.

I would like to follow his approach but I don’t know which “little registry patch” Wayne is referring to and there is no link to the site where I can read more about and download it.

Please consider providing that information which would make this post much more valuable.

I didn’t have the trouble that Wayne did, but I did run into one problem when I was installing Win XP Pro on a new computer. After installing SP3, Windows Update would no longer work. It would download updates, but then when it would try to install them, it would error and not install any of them.

I found someone on the MS support forum who suggested that registering Wups2.dll would fix the problem and it did fix the updates problem for me.

So if anyone out there is having that update problem, you can find the solution here:

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3308206&SiteID=17

-yvonne

i installed xp sp3 on my virtual machine and had no problems what so ever. at first the only thing i could notice different on it was the fact that is said sp3 in the system preferences.
now i have seen some other stuff they changed such as: mscofig
it now has a tools (just a guess i used a dutch version) tab just like vista. that explorer proble i haven’t encountered (jet) ; ).
i did use the dutch version of xp so it had less bugs than the english version.

I have had some problems with SP3 as well, but nothing that was extremely advanced. Some of my programs ceased to work, in which case, I downloaded an alternative. Later down the road, though, I discovered that my DVD-RW and CD-ROM drives ceased to work as well. Luckily, Microsoft has a patch for that.

I only run Vista now, but I maintain several other computers for friends, and they all have XP. I was going to install Service Pack 3 on one of them, but after reading the above post, I won’t do it. I don’t need the headache! I’ve got enough headaches with Vista! In my personal opinion, Microsoft has become very lax in the past three years, to the point where they are now actually dithering. The Microsoft Knowledge Base is at times like a great echoing vacuum of non-information, which rarely supplies a quick and dirty fix, but instead involves you in useless technicalities and overblown formalities. The above poster is absolutely right, and Microsoft is now putting out basic, essential software that CANNOT be handled by average users. My sister is requesting that I upgrade her computer to Vista, but it seems to me that I already hear the phone ringing, with one distressed sister on the line who has to get her work done but finds that Vista has gone into spasms, or a coma, or is brain dead. I will have to puzzle out how to fix it, in addition to, and at the same time that I am trying to figure out how to get my own Vista computer to do what it should be doing but isn’t. Microsoft software has become so error-prone that it is taking its toll even on the geeks, causing them to download Linux trials, Solaris, anything they can get their feverish hands on that might have some chance of working. I have even considered going to Mac OS, believing it has to be better, but not so fast say many online geeks, pointing to many an unexpected twist or glitch. What to do? Bill Gates is going away and Microsoft is dithering already, and I am pausing now before I turn my computer on in the morning, and thinking, do I need this?

I didn’t have any problems installing XP SP3.

I installed sp3 update over the Windows XP sp2 on two computers. One was older with AMD Sempron, ATA drives, Abit NF7 mainboard etc, and one was newer with AMD 64 X2, Biostar T560 mainboard, SATA drives etc. Installation went smoothly on both comps. I didn’t have any of the problems installing it mentioned above. I red somewhere that XP needs SATA drivers in order to work with those kind of drives. In my case everything works great without any 3rd party drivers or something like that.

Hi Chris ,
I run a single computer and had no trouble installing sp3 .
I downloaded the file from M/S ,closed all programs opened or running then ran the .exe file .It took some time but installed without a hitch .My computer a that time had all M/S
updates up to sp3 installed .I have also had no other programs causing problems due to the update .
To mention I use Zone Alarm freeware,Avast freeware plus Spyware Dr,Spybot and AdAware together with WinPatrol as my main security software as well as numerous other programs none of which have behaved badly due sp3

When I would use IE (I mostly use Firefox, but there are certain sites I use IE for) once I had seven or so tabs open I would get a persistent message asking me to “close all tabs”.

I was quite surprised when I hit “Cancel” only to have the exact same dialog box pop up. I couldn’t end the process.

Now I don’t use IE at all.

Everything was fine prior to SP3.

Has anyone else had this?

I have nothing extravagant running on my system and have no threatening spy ware/viruses/malware on my system… Except for XP SP3 apparently…

Hmm…. I think my automatic updates alrready uptaded my sp2 to sp3… not sure.. but I had no problems at all, guess I have to check if it did got installed or something

I had to restore the entire system just to install SP3. It was mostly due to some of the tweaks I had done in the past. After I restored the system the installation went fairly smoothly. There was really nothing to stop it, since I had nothing but the pre-installed software. SP3 seems to be worth it, I’ve noticed some that it does make the system a little faster and more secure.

I am not a tech guy at all. 3 weeks ago a friend attempted to download a legal copy of MS Office 2007 with Front Page. It would not finish the download, error message said a file was missing, insert CD. We did that about 20 times, with no luck. Then we spent the next 30 minutes trying to remove the program. MS would not allow that to happen. All my .doc files will only open after a prompt, and the only thing I can do is print them. GRRRR #1. The next day after that, auto update installed SP3. I have an AMD processor. Multiple bootups and lockups ensue. When I boot up in Safe Mode, it shows SP3 still installed on my computer, with no way to remove it. Cannot do restore, as the MS calendar will not let me do that except after the SP3 was installed. I was >< that close to getting out my 12 guage and obliterating anything with a MS logo on it. Oh, my wife’s computer is a twin of mine, so we actually had 2 X 2 problems. My solution? I bought 2 Dell XP puters at Wally World. I will use them with bare bones everything, Firefox as browser, for the next 3 yrs. If MS doesn’t get their act together, I’ll buy a Mac anything the next time. I had more problems the last 3 weeks than I had the previous 13 yrs. of using MS. There, I feel better already, thanks for reading!

Well, the way I’ve always done it, if my system is working OK, and I have all the Microsoft “If it’s Tuedsday it must be time for a critical patch” updates, I don’t install service packs, for about 6 months at least. I always go back to “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Saves me a lot of heartaches.

I still haven’t been able to install SP3. I’m using using VMWare Fusion and keep getting a message saying that I don’t have the rights to continue (or some thing like that.)

Hi Chris,
Am I supposed to be able to hear your music and typing (and you singing)? Well, anyway I had a disaster installing SP3 and had to reformat (TWICE). I have a Athlon processor on a machine I built so there is no image file that includes Intel drivers (a known glitch for OEMs). Everything was fine until I ran my ckdsk. I then got into the constant reboot mode. After 3 hours on the phone with the boys in India, (very nice btw) but unable to solve the problem that Microsoft is allegedly aware of, they suggested a repair installation and it didn’t help. Had to do another clean install and am not installing SP3 until I’m sure the bug is fixed.
I have been reading and following you for years ans appreciate the great help you have been to me. When I was just getting to computers I was one of your “Call for Help” calls about 5-6 years ago. Cheers……Tom

I installed SP3 without even noticing it just told me that i needed to install an update and i clicked ok. I did not have any problems.

I’ve downloaded the full XP3 package and installed on 4 systems. The install itself completed without any problems, but on the two laptops (both HP systems) we*ve now had problems with standby. The screens go black but the system and fans keeps running, and it’s not possible to wake the systems up without having to shut them down/reboot with the use of the power-button.
On the desktop systems everything is running/working smoothly.

no problems at all with me!

Sounds like Vista is better? Hmmm, I guess I am lucky with Vista

Once I found XP SP3 and installed it, everything seemed like it didn’t change. I think SP3 is just the same as SP2, but I did however run into one problem after installation. Once I had SP3, my automatic updates stopped working. Every time I go into Microsoft Update, it would download the updates, but then it would say it was unable to install them.

I solved this problem easily by going through their troubleshoot and tweaking the registry a little.

I don’t have any problems downloading SR3 package. I love Windows XP and when I heard about SR3 package I went straight to Microsoft.com and got the SR3 package. Thanks for the update.

I installed it when it first came out. Didn’t have any problems. Didn’t really see any changes.

OMG i hated trying to install it..it took me forever but i was happy to install it finally

haven’t had any issues yet! :)

I do some computer repair with a friend of mine and it seems that some computers actually function okay with sp3 and some dont… i still dont know if i would recommend it just yet but thats just my thought on it…

when it comes to vista you should really just look into setting up a dual boot. being in tech support iv been getting calls in regards to people getting all sorts of errors, i haven’t gotten a real chance to test myself but i don’t think ill go threw all thoughts steps any time soon.

I haven’t the foggiest idea why everyone is having such a problem with SP3. I have had no problems at all with a straight install from Windows Update, none what so ever! I am a very experienced Windows user, I waited to see what everyone else was doing then I installed SP3 and waited for really bad things to happen…..and nothing did! Maybe I got lucky.

I’ve not really have been having problems with the installation of SP3, although it did give me problems when I installed SP3 on a machine with Windows X’s Live Vista Transformation Pack (VTP). Now it doesn’t looks like Vista, but like a mixture between Windows 2000 and the colors of Vista. So I deleted the pack and just set the Media Center theme since it’s a Media Center and I like that theme also.

Does anybody had any similar problems like this? I’d like to know. Thanks!

Daan.

PS: Chris, how is the “Social Me”-problem solving going?

i didn’t have any problem installing sp3 but 1 thing that i think is strange is after installing windows update said i have like 25 new updates…..wasn’t sp3 suppose to have them all???….and i made sure all my stuff was up to date a few day’s before sp3 was released so i should of had everything

my sound disapered on one computer and on the other it got slow very slow im going to get rid of it it’s junk

well i’ve install sp3 on a few computers without any problems. the problem most people have with installation is that there using windows updates. well its kinda of crazy that you would first install a whole bunch of updates and then use windows updates again to install sp3 which includes all the old updates that were previously available.

i first downloaded the iso image of sp3 available at microsoft website, and burn the image to CD.

2. backup everything

3. reinstall a fresh copy of windows xp, with sp2 from 2003.

4. after installation i installed all my drivers for my PC.

5. inserted the CD with sp3 inside, ran sp3 off the CD and it only took about 10 minutes with restart.

6. after reboot under my computer properties it said sp3.

7. i went to windows updates to see if there were any things left out. there were about 12 items left, all the net framework crap plus IE 7, and windows media player 11.

those updates took probably 25 minutes or so. after that

perfect installation of windows!!!! i boot in like 19 seconds. system is so fast.

I have an old XP machine and I got to install SP3 without any difficulty. Vista SP1 on the other hand had an error at first but then I just reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled SP1. then it was great. The system starts up and shuts down faster. Plus, its a lot faster asd well. Vista SP1 is great. As for XP SP3, I noticed almost no change in system performance. It still is slow and old. Do I need to reformat that HD as well?

I was going to try SP3 and share my experiences, but it turns out that the 64bit version is not out yet. It simply amazes me that as we all are using or upgrading to 64 bit processors Microsoft neglects to support the this technology properly.

I was not able to install SP3 on my HP Media Center PC. The download ran O.K., but half way through the install, I would get an error window that said I did not have permission to install. I am a member of the Administrators group, and had turned off all the anit spyware and anti virus software.
After trying many web ideas, I went to the Microsoft web site and found the solution to my problem.
The problem:
Some programs change the system access control lists in the Registry so that administrator accounts cannot alter them. When the SP3 install tries to access these registry locations it can’t, and stops.
The Fix:
Go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949377
Microsoft gives 3 methods to fix the problem…most of us have
tried the first two. The third method involves a simple download of a file called Subinacl.exe…you save this on your computer. Then you copy and paste a 7 line script into a notepad (text) document, change its file name, and then just double click this file. The script executes the Subinacl file that you downloaded earlier, and goes through your computers registry and changes all those locations back to the permission level that they should be. It runs for about 15 minutes.
After running the script, I went to the Microsoft Auto update site (again), Let the site check my computer (again) and then the already downloaded SP3 started to install … again !!
THE INSTALL RAN WITH NO INTERRUPTIONS, AND WAS SUCCESSFUL.
Greg Fiore

There is a script error on this page, sHover is not found.

Thanks for fixing this ecology of web services so that I will want to come back and pay attention to this site.

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I am not going to install SP3 until I know for sure all the kinks have been worked out… I tried to install it earlier (after I read Kat’s post about that worm) and it said that the update failed. I tried several times and it didn’t work. I have read this post before, I was consulting it to see whether or not I should actually install it at all. I don’t think I will, as I said at the begining. I was using IE (uhg) to go to the Windows Update site, and it didn’t wanna work…. So I’ll just leave it until a month or so in the future and come back here to see more opinions.

Oh, this is just another reason why I love Linux!

I do HAVE to use Windows for a few job-related things and games, that just don’t want to work 100% in WINE (and that is becoming less and less of an issue) but I’ve had my problems with SP3.

First, I see no reason to upgrade my main PC, hardware wise (Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe 2.75GHz Athlon X2 4200+, 4GB RAM @ DDR500 and a pair of 7950 GTs – yeah, it’s a gaming/work PC.) SP3 causes issues with this board. After install, you need to unplug all USB Hard drives/Flash drives to boot into XP SP3! In my case, maybe because one was plugged in durring SP3 install, one flashdrive needs to be plugged in. There is no way around this, no Safe Mode available as it will just reboot before the F8 key can be used! Big problem after leaving my flash drive at work! Maybe this should go more to ASUS then Microsoft, but still, no SP3 for me.

Also, it kills a game on the PC I built and gave to my parents-in-law, the one and only game my father-in-law gets to play (due to time, mother-in-law, etc) and SP3 kills it. Again, not really a Microsoft issue? or is it? (wait til the end)

And I’ve checked out Vista – what a HOG!

So yeah, I’ve made the switch to Linux, in particular openSUSE and KDE4. It’s faster, and combines form and function much better than Vista and over the eye-sore that is XP and it’s 3 themes (4 if you count Zune and the 3 themes being one in 3 colors). Funny how I can get the same transparency effect on a P3 laptop that Vista would say at the beginning of the install ‘You’re joking, right?’

Even my wife has enjoyed using openSUSE over XP and Vista, and the educational programs available for our kids is great. Music and Picture management is also much better.

Ok, so I’ve maybe I’ve made this into more of a ‘Go Linux’ post, but that’s how I feel anymore, especially how updating the main system in linux rarely breaks my old apps/games from running (and the few that do, are so easy to fix). Going from KDE3 to KDE4 had no issues like how Win98 to XP did, and Vista. So the whole ‘major system update’ like SP2 to SP3 and KDE3 to KDE4 is the comparison. So yeah, I think Microsoft does deserve some blame in making your system (or parts of) not work after an update.

Yep, buy a new windows, buy new versions of your apps for the new windows, buy new hardware etc…

But Linux (unless you buy a support subscription for it) = $0!

Bye Microsoft!