SP3 Success - 2 down 22 to go

[Hula Baloo]

After reading all the reports of SP3 problems, several of which were
on configurations similar to mine, I just thought it'd be nice to report
a trouble-free installation on 2 out of 2 machines I've tested it on so
far. The first PC is a 7 year old Dell Dimension 8100 with a 1.3 GHz
P4, the second one a 2 year old RYO machine with an Intel 3.2 GHz
Prescott CPU with HT. I have these networked via both a wired D-Link
router and a Wireless-G Netgear router (for use with my laptop running
Vista). I've tested all my software and hardware and found one and only
one problem. My Works 9 calendar stopped running, but
uninstall/reinstall quickly fixed that. Details of the 3.2 GHz
software/hardware where I've done most of my testing so far are below.
I've been humbled too many times by upgrades, so I'm not here to
gloat, just report that SP3 does work well for at least SOME of us. My
next machine has an AMD 3500 CPU, so I've renamed the INTELPPM.SYS file
in preparation to upgrade it. If that goes well, I've got 21 new Dell
Optiplex machines to go (Intel 1.8 GHz dual core CPUs w/XP Pro).
Here're the details of the 3.2 GHz system I've done most testing on.
Software: OE 6, IE 7, Roxio Suite 7, Word 2002 SP3, Ad-Aware 2007,
Quicken Deluxe 2005,
Power DVD V4, Firefox 2.0.0.12, AOL 9.1, Adobe reader 7.0, Jasc Paint
Shop Pro 9,
The Print Shop 22, Mozilla Thunderbird, Norton Ghost 9, OpenOffice 2.0,
Partition Magic 8, WordPerfect Family Pack 5, ZoneAlarm Firewall, Belarc
Advisor, MS Works 9.
Hardware: Intel P4 Prescott 3.2 GHz CPU with HT, 1 GB dual channel DDR RAM,
Airlink101 PCI wireless-G card, Integrated 10/100 NIC, 4 networked PCs,
Shared printers (Samsung & Canon), DVD ROM, DVD RW, WD 36 GB 10K RPM C:
drive (PATA),
Seagate SATA 120 GB D: drive, external Seagate SATA 160 GB HD via USB.

 

[Hula Baloo]

Make that 3 down, 21 to go. But while the 1st two upgrades were
problem-free, the 3rd machine made up for that. It would run to the point
of getting just past the "Checking Product Key" step, then BLAM it crashed
with a blank screen, and C-A-D didn't work. It took 5 or 6 attempts of
trying most things on the MS SP3 suggestions list before I finally booted up
in Safe Mode and installed with the 324 meg SP3 file I'd downloaded. I
don't know why this last PC was so difficult except that I had a pot full of
USB devices plus an old parallel port scanner. After wasting about 8 hours
struggling with that beast, I'd recommend this process to anyone
encountering a crash like I did.

 

[Swifty]

Make that 3 down, 21 to go. But while the 1st two upgrades were
problem-free, the 3rd machine made up for that.

If you still have 21 to go, I'd strongly recommend downloading the ISO
image and creating a CD to install SP3 on the rest.

I got some really weird message about some cab file not containing what
was expected on my second networked update, so generated a CD and
installed without a hitch. It was also faster (depending on the
bandwidths of your network and CD drive)