x61 power management under xp sp3

[kg216]

Has anyone experienced issues with the power management under xp sp3? (does not slow down the cpu, the fan is running always loud)

[icantux]

I use RMClock to cycle down the CPU and it works just fine. The fan does kick in whenever the temps reach 44C and doesn't quite stop which is weird.

Otherwise everything's running nicely here. I slipstreamed SP3 into XP (SP2) and then installed the Lenovo drivers but not all the software. No problems in slowing down the CPU and as mentioned the system runs nice and cool as well.

[gunston]

sp3 doen't help in reduce the heat.

[crashnburn]

I am questioning if SP3 should even be installed at this point due to issues with any new Service Pack.

[icantux]

I am questioning if SP3 should even be installed at this point due to issues with any new Service Pack.

Actually my system's very responsive with 0 (zero) bugs or issues running SP3. Of course, I slipstreamed SP3 onto a XP-SP2 original, installed that and Lenovo drivers (only) and I haven't experienced any issues whatsoever.

I did try installing SP3 on a system that was already running SP2 and I did encounter networking problems. However, I read somewhere where people are reporting greater success by installing SP3 while in "safe mode" thus negating some ill side-effects of a regular SP3 installation.

[gunston]

so it is advisable not to upgrade to sp3 ?

[icantux]

Well, not particularly "not advisable"....

If someone's running a perfectly stable SP2 system which is updated regularly, then there's no reason to install SP3 as the service pack offers nothing new in terms of "significant" add-ons. Looking back, SP1 offered full USB2.0 recognition, SP2 offered the Security Centre and some other things, but SP3 is mostly one large collection of patches and hotfixes.

On the other hand, if someone's thinking of installing a fresh copy of XP on their system (for whatever reason), then it's worthwhile installing SP3 instead of installing 100's of hotfixes via Windows Update, but there's a catch...

I took the plunge and performed a series of tests on a bad rainy day and this is what I came up with (in terms of SP3 installation and stability of system - X61 and a P4 tower case system):

- Problem scenarios: if I installed XP (SP2) on either system, then installed SP3 - I encountered many issues described above... Next, I encountered tons of problems when installing the SP3 over an existing installation of either a combination of SP2 with IE6 or SP2 with IE7. There are many articles describing the reasons for the problems SP3 will cause when installing on a system already running SP2 with either version of IE ... Put it simply, because MS chose to integrate IE into XP, there are numerous compatibility problems when installing SP3. SP3 ships with "updated" IE6 runtimes that conflict with the IE files (updated or not) that are being used by the system (SP2). It's even worse if you have IE7 running on an SP2 system, because SP3 never updates the IE7 runtimes (SP3 doesn't ship with IE7 but with IE6!!). It's a really weird situation.

- No problem scenario: when I integrated SP3 into an XP-SP2 disk and installed that, updated the system via "Windows Update" (couple of hotfixes) then upgraded IE6 to IE7 thru Windows Update, both my systems run very stable without problems.

There are a quite a few websites with pointers on how to integrate (slipstream) SP3 into an XP-SP2 disk... keep in mind that you need to copy the contents of the XP-SP2 disk to your HDD and then integrate SP3 into that... then make an ISO, burn it and voila - you have an XP disk with SP3 ready for installation.

MS is really messed up with all the different versions of patches, the early version of SP3 and different versions of IE7 that wreak havoc and cause so many problems for users out there.

[artic_squirrel]

i got an xp-sp3 splitted with an xp sp0 and evrything is ok

the fan, when on battery, is always running, but with nhc it's ok
i don't know if it's due to the sp3 since i don't have an sp2