Kenneth Whyman SC Friday, July 23, 2010, 7:01 PM 
Wrote:


Windows XP Service Pack 3 is just as stable as its Service Pack 2
predecessor in my own experience without adding much in the way of
overhead. It's also the only supported version of XP left. Microsoft is
no longer writing patches for XP unless Service Pack 3 is installed as a
prerequisite. 
 
No reason not to install Service Pack 3 at this point.

Just make sure to have the system clean of viruses before you do so, so
the infection doesn't interfere with the installation or infect the
various backups made by the upgrade process. Several of my fellow
contributors made very good suggestions on various resources and methods
to try. Best wishes for a healthy computing experience, both for your
machine and for you (stress and the like).

end*

I tried loading SP3 before writing this reply:
I am having issues getting SP3 to load on my HP dv5117cl with an AMD Turion 64 chipset. I get a dialog box telling me there is a problem loading the installer for .Net and to contact my hardware vendor for further assistance.
 
I have heard several forums discussing the "black screen of death" after the Windows XP loading screen upon installing SP3. 
 
This appears to be not limited to only on Hewlett Packard with the AMD cpu but also with other mobo makers with Intel processors.
 
HP recommends installing "SoftPaq.exe" for AMD processors. The instructions say "uninstall the current CPU driver and replace with the downloaded version"
Concern: If I uninstall the current cpu driver and replace it, what drives the cpu operation during this process? 
 
Thanks,
Joseph Holmes
 
 
 
 
 


      

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