New updates...

[forthbridge]

I've had no issues at all (except IIRC something went awry with an update to IE (when it became Windows Internet explorer) - and I've never even paid attention to what updates went in - it was all auto.

To be fair, I was probably a little harsh on M$ when it's actually down to shoddy practice (laziness) by HP for (apparently) ignoring best practice in imaging windows.

I'm going to keep a close eye on events surrounding this before I allow any post-SP2 updates from now on however. I have the patch installed, but I don't (yet) know for sure that opening windows up to updates (and SP3) won't give me the same problems!

[DaveB]

The advantage you have now Jim is that you know what the problem is and can be ready for it ;-)

I've not had M$ spin me a duff one either to be honest but saying that.. I never let auto-updates install anything I don't like the look of, always checking first what is in the update I cracked when IE7 came out and installed that after weeks of reminders and it shot the sh1t out of my screen fonts :o Fortunately, uninstall was included so no permanent damage done ;-)

I'm very shortly moving back to intel after a layoff of around 6 or 7 years (PIII 667) and will be taking XP with me on this adventure so I'll save SP3 until then

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Tomliner]

Hi Gents.Picking up from a previous comment,I would agree that shut down and start up is a little faster.I have still seen no adverse effects although my PC is not AMD but is a P4 machine.That is about as far as my expertise goes! EricT

[DanKH]

Then Mr Dan.. you obviously don't use an HP AMD based system or an AMD based system for that matter Perhaps you'd not be so cock-a-hoot were this the case ;-)

Y'awl come back y'hear

ATB

DaveB :tab:

You are absolutely right Mr. Dave. I wouldn't touch an AMD processor even if it was thrown at me for free. So speaking of religion, Yes I'm pro-Intel. recently pro-nVidia, and always a pro-MS.

A LINUX running on an AMD with an ATI card, somehow doesn't work for me I guess we all have our preferences .... :kissu:

HP though, I could go for that, I've been running Compaq/HP all my professional life, so no troubles there, Home-wise I'm running a "bamboo-kind-of-model": a Medion from ALDI would you believe it!

OK now I've let it slip out of the closet ... shoot me

[forthbridge]

Yeah, always worth having a good read. I was caught out a while ago when I downloaded the RAW thumbnailer from M$ - (which says it's unsupported) - and it then took me a while to realise that if I opened an image in an editor while a folder was open beneath it, it crashed the editor. I must have reinstalled the editor a dozen times!!

The thing with SP3 was that I read the M$ bump beforehand, and as I'd not had any other issues, I went ahead - there was no real need to be suspect at the time!

Still, it's cleaned up the C drive I suppose.... :roll:

[Tarasdad]

I learned long, long ago to wait a minimum of six months before even thinking about installing MS service packs. Gives time for most of the worst bugs to be found and documented, and for MS to find ways to fix the more blatant ones. Guess it'll be sometime about late November before I see if SP3 is worth downloading yet.

[nigelb]

As reported by wxpnews:

"Another SP3 Problem: Device Manager Empty and/or Network icons gone

It appears that many people are having the same problem with XP Service Pack 2: after installing on some systems, the Device Manager doesn't display your devices and/or the icons in Network Connections disappear. Folks have reported that removing SP3 doesn't fix the problem, nor does system restore. This appears to be due to corruption in certain registry keys. This is popping up all over the discussion forums."

The good news is it appears to only pertain to systems with Norton AV installed and hopefully everyone here is smart enough not to have that monstrosity on their system.

[speedbird591]

The good news is it appears to only pertain to systems with Norton AV installed and hopefully everyone here is smart enough not to have that monstrosity on their system.

I think we should add that as an essential piece of software to Dan's dream machine.

A LINUX running on an AMD with an ATI card, somehow doesn't work for me I guess we all have our preferences .... :kissu:

It should also have Lotus Smart Suite installed, of course, and for those leisure hours perhaps FS2000 might be the ultimate relaxation!

We could market it as 'The Nemesis'! What other essentials should we include?

Ian

[DanKH]

I would certainly want to have an old version of Norton Utilities + Anti Virus, and of course Word Perfect 5.0

Dumping FSX down on that, would give me some tweaking to do during the long winter nights

[Tomliner]

Hi Folks.Having just read the comments about device manager and Norton AV I thought I'd better check.All seems ok.Device manager is populated ok and yes I do have Norton AV(don't shout at me.Not being a pc whizkid it is a case of better the devil you know!) EricT