SP3 Windows XP... what's the verdict?

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USSS · #61 Post by **USSS** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:30 pm

nxman wrote:After installing XP Sp3 on my T61 i noticed the system was faster specially office however i noticed more crashes and my T61 freezes often.

Yet another reason not to install it for now on my T43.

#62 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 5:57 pm

USSS wrote:
nxman wrote:After installing XP Sp3 on my T61 i noticed the system was faster specially office however i noticed more crashes and my T61 freezes often.
Yet another reason not to install it for now on my T43.

I cannot say about the T61, because my T61 is running Vista Business. However, I can say that SP3 is as reliable as SP2 (zero crashes or freezeups) on my T41 or on any client T30/T4x I have tried it on. ... JDH

USSS · #63 Post by **USSS** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 6:48 pm

Well, that's a bit encouraging for the T4x seriies, and I quietly hope that I can eventually install SP3 on both my T43 and very old (circa 1999) Micron Millennia 500MHz desktop system, both of which run Windows XP SP2.

My lingering concern is the possible conflict of SP3 with the ATI Mobility Radeon X300 video card drivers on my T43.

proaudioguy · #64 Post by **proaudioguy** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 12:33 am

dr. zoidberg wrote:For those that had problems with wireless not connecting after installing SP3, I solved it by enabling the Extensible Authentication Protocol Service. I posted this in the T4x subforum so this is just a heads up.

Your solution did not work for me. I'm on an X32. My PCI WWAN works but WiFi does not. I've tried SP3 4 times since Beta RC 3 with the same problem. I've got the Intel ABG card.

Dees anyone have a working solution for this? I don't use Access connections but I tried it just for fun and no luck. I also reverted to 2 older driver versions. The only solution for me has been to uninstall SP3.

Tim M · #65 Post by **Tim M** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 5:48 pm

That's discouraging...I wonder if it's an issue specific to the Intel cards (I have the 2200BG).

I guess I'll still be avoiding SP3 until either Microsoft or Intel patches this issue.

loyukfai · #66 Post by **loyukfai** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 1:20 pm

Tim M wrote:That's discouraging...I wonder if it's an issue specific to the Intel cards (I have the 2200BG).

I guess I'll still be avoiding SP3 until either Microsoft or Intel patches this issue.

Installed SP3 RTM before it's released on WU/MU on a X41T with 2200BG, so far so good.

The 2200BG driver is as updated as what is offered by Lenovo System Update.

spuddog · #67 Post by **spuddog** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:10 am

I've updated to sp3 on two desktops and my R51 which has a 2200bg wireless card. No problems. (I did make full images before updating though)

Scott

Stargate199 · #68 Post by **Stargate199** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:28 pm

The System at home that has XP has SP3 on it. It seemed to make it a little faster, but I think the main reason for the SP is so IT managers don't has to install 200 updates once they install/reinstall XP on a machine.

My machine has Vista with SP1 and I noticed quite a bit of improvement with SP1.

Tim M · #69 Post by **Tim M** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 1:31 am

proaudioguy wrote:
dr. zoidberg wrote:For those that had problems with wireless not connecting after installing SP3, I solved it by enabling the Extensible Authentication Protocol Service. I posted this in the T4x subforum so this is just a heads up.
Your solution did not work for me. I'm on an X32. My PCI WWAN works but WiFi does not. I've tried SP3 4 times since Beta RC 3 with the same problem. I've got the Intel ABG card.

Dees anyone have a working solution for this? I don't use Access connections but I tried it just for fun and no luck. I also reverted to 2 older driver versions. The only solution for me has been to uninstall SP3.

Nor did it work for me with AC 4.52 installed. However, I was getting the identical problem recently when upgrading CSS/R&R and found that uninstalling AC followed by "repairing" my wireless connection and reinstalling the Ethernet drivers restored connectivity. I have yet to see if SP3 will install successfully with AC gone. I'll try that after backing up my system and having a beer.

NitroxDM · #70 Post by **NitroxDM** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 10:48 pm

SP 3 kills my network, both WLAN and LAN on my R51. If I try to configure, disable, uninstall, or repair any of the network devices Windows just locks up. Pretty cool... rrrr

Tim M · #71 Post by **Tim M** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 6:03 pm

Well, I finally attempted to reinstall SP 3 from the 330 MB file for manual download. I had previously uninstalled AC and R&R and had also updated the ethernet and wireless drivers. After the SP3 installation, wireless did not work and I had to uninstall and reinstall the device. The ethernet worked straightaway.

UPDATE: Issues continue as discussed here. SP3 seems to have broken WPA encryption. If there isn't a resolution, I'll be reverting to SP2 and forgetting about SP3 entirely...it's just not worth the hassle.

propellen · #72 Post by **propellen** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:19 am

I did an SP3 install last night on my t60. The update went flawless, leaving my system faster than before. Thus SP3 get thumbs up from me!

proaudioguy · #73 Post by **proaudioguy** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 4:10 am

Good News! I got it working. As with most things Windows, I don't really know why but here is what I did.

Instead of using microsoft update, I downloaded the full install for IT professionals. I just searched around for it. Before that I found a few drivers for my card, one of which was from the Intel site, ver 9.0.4.39 for the 2915 ABG card. After the update, I initially had no connection. I removed the WIFI device from device manager. I reinstalled it, no luck. I updated the drivers to an OLD version from 2006. No luck. I restarted the machine, it connected. I ran it like that most of the day. I didn't want to push my luck, but I had numerous page loading failures (maybe 10%). Knowing the sites well this wasn't normal but may not be related. I decided to upgrade from within device manager back to the Dec 2007 Intel driver I had downloaded and installed earlier. I did it all manually when the questions came up by selecting no, I'll choose from a list, etc, etc. I restarted right away this time. It worked. Just to be sure I disabled with FN-F5, then re-enabled. It still works, and reconnected immediately, faster than ever actually.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that all of that was necessary, it's just the convoluted way I went about it having read something here about using old drivers. Perhaps simply uninstalling and reinstalling the device manually and restarting combined with using the complete SP3 download package did the trick. My previous attempts were with the much smaller windows update version and all had failed miserably. The most recent failure was about a month ago. I had started to figure SP3 and the X32 were never going to get along together.

proaudioguy · #74 Post by **proaudioguy** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 2:37 pm

proaudioguy wrote:Good News! I got it working. As with most things Windows, I don't really know why but here is what I did.
Snip

OK I spoke to soon. It only works when it's restarted, or started from hibernation. It cannot find NEW WIFI networks that are not already saved. I use my network at home and use my Sprint card when I'm traveling so I've been able to muddle through.

SP3 does seem more responsive overall, although it's a small boost. For WIFI it's completely broken for some computers, and partially broken for others. Not worth the upgrade at this point. I'm going to keep it on for a while and hope for an update. Unfortunately it doesn't know it's broken so it doesn't use the error reporting service.

Does anyone know how to report this to MS AND LENOVO?

joester · #75 Post by **joester** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 6:04 pm

Having "repaired" so many systems for people at work, I dowloaded SP1a, SP3, and the IE7 install files.

As long as the software is SP1a minimum, you can jump to SP3 with no issues that I've found. Last night, I installed XP on a Dell 3200 with a 233Mhz processor and only 144MB RAM (Maxxed out).

I didn't archive anything during the install. After SP3 was done, I turned on the update option, and let windows finish updating. Then installed AVG free and Spybot.

To my surprise, I only ate up 3 of the 9ish GB HDD. That, and it really doesn't run too bad. Sluggish for sure, but reasonable for the printserver I had in mind until I get a chance and the extra cash to buy a real print server.

My only issue was on my 600x where I lost the sound until I let the SP3 upgrade install. Then I had sound back. It was almost like MS was holding my sound as ransom until I allowed the upgrade.

I wouldn't hesitate to install SP3 on anything at this point.

Joe

zern · #76 Post by **zern** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 11:41 am

Just installed SP3 on my T60p. The update came down in the background via Windows Update earlier on in the week but I have been ignoring it till the weekend.

The install went fine. The machine feels more responsive, and Office 2003 apps also seem to start faster. I have been having Outlook/McAfee conflicts all week prior to this install so I have been rebooting the machine under SP2 a bit. The startup speed increase with SP3 is definitely noticeable.

I cant rotate my external monitor as pointed out by someone else on this thread earlier on. I downloaded the ATI FireGL V5200 driver 8.5x (I had 8.442.3.0) to see if it worked but it refused to install. I guess I have to wait till the new Lenovo version appears in System Update. Sigh...

Wireless networking is fine so far.

(I was hoping SP3 will fix the annoying Outlook/McAfee spat but it was not so. Essentially McAfee stops Outlook from displaying the bodies of message windows, stops some messages from being opened with an "Unable to Open Item" error, and prevents me from saving calendar or contact documents. Has anyone come across this?)

SP3 Windows XP... what's the verdict?

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