Windows XP holdouts were blinded by a ray of hope with the release of Service Pack 3, a major update consisting of existing patches with a few enhancements thrown in that has been widely reported to significantly boost significant performance of the aging OS. But the Valley’s own Data Doctors warned against rashly installing this product — and boy, were they ever right!
Too bad Microsoft pushed this problem out as a vital update.
At this point the people having problems seem to be those running XP on a Hewlett-Packard/Compaq machine with AMD processors. The update installs, then your machine reboots … and reboots … and reboots. There is much talk of workarounds etc., and many people being unable to enter Safe Mode and System Restore. (Fortunately, I was able to roll back to a pre-update restore point.)
Here are a few resources — but unless you’re already stricken, it’s best to follow the Doctors’ orders and wait until Microsoft works out the bugs.
- Microsoft Help and Support (don’t snicker, it’s free and unlimited when it involves SP3). Phone: 1 (866) 234-6020.
- Computerworld article (and another)
- Geek.com article
- Jesper’s blog
I have a Compaq Presario with an AMD Athlon 64 3400+. I experienced the problem you describe. Following installation of the SP3 update, I restarted, as instructed. The restart was unsuccessful, as were five other attempts at Normal Mode. I was able to restart into Safe Mode With Networking, get on a chat session with their tech support, and it was one simple registry edit to fix the problem. Since Safe Mode will not be accessible for some, I would recommend jotting down Microsoft’s SP3 toll free tech support telephone number before attempting the update.