Service Pack 3 for XP

[malekdarshin]

DON'T INSTALL IT!

Everything seemed to be fine when I did until I hooked up my USB Mp3 player. Media player would shut down with an error message when I hooked it up. Winamp was the same. I tryed to to a system restore only to find that all of my restore points were wiped out. Microsoft said that you could uninstall SP3 but when I tried I lost the ability to launch anything from the desktop. It would just make a shortcut when I double clicked, and even then Media player would shutdown. A reinstall of Media player wouldn't fix the problem, neither would a reinstall of Windows. A format and reinstall was the only thing that would work.

From what I understand this isn't an isolated problem. A lot of people have many different problems after installing SP3 and some don't. It's up to you if you want to risk it.

[Asrai]

Hmmm... Would it be possible for this SP3 to muck with your audio and video codecs? When exactly was it relased? (I've got my computer set to automatically download and install, so I wouldn't really have paid much attention when it happened.) That could explain a few things.

[Chief]

hmm , strange problem. i've installed it on over 50 pcs at work and there aren't any issues.

[malekdarshin]

I'm thinking it had something to do with some kind of anti-piracy software that might have been bundled with SP3. It's strange though that I could play anything I wanted from my computer, but when a Mp3 player was attached Media Player would shut down. I had no other problems until I tried to uninstall SP3, then all hell broke loose. I'll stick with SP2.

[MeshGearFox]

This installed itself recently when I was trying to fix my directx install and the installation procedure went wrong and a bunch of other things did too. It tried to install before shutting down, got hung up... I have no idea what happened, but I needed to system restore.