FYI: Support for XP with SP2 will end on July 13, 2010

I've seen nothing that suggests that Athlon chips cannot accept SP2 or SP3.

Mark

Mark, hello.

If you have an Athlon machine, of the old type, let us say maybe 4 to 5 year old, and you try to install SP2 or SP3, you have a surprise coming. Google for this for a while and you will see all kinds of notes complaining about this fact. I am one with three Athlon machines and I can vouch for this. There is also a known fact that HP and Compaq were selling OEM machines using a load CD from MS that included Intel data when they were selling Athlon CPU'd machines. Nogo ! They came out with a patch to remove the Intel stuff from the Registry and then maybe, just maybe, the updates would work. I would have no benefit in fooling you, I am just a normal user here. Go back up a few messages in this forum and you will see that others are also living through this mistake. So far, MS has not done anything to solve this riddle. I will know more when I get home in a week or so. Stay tuned. JP.

NB: If you try to instaLL SP2 OR SP3, save an image first of your complete machine. A word to the wise !

At the time when SP3 first came out, I performed the updates on quite a few Windows XP machines with a fair number of them being HP/AMD (old) machines.. Installation of the fix/patch worked fine and all machines installed SP3 perfectly.. Of course, we did the SP3 update shortly after it first came out and prepare each of the computers by performing all of the steps in the link below.. (Preparation is the key to getting a clean install.)

Update: Preparing Your Windows XP Computer For SP3

I installed SP3 on over 100 machines and had ZERO problems but all machines were prepared as per the link.. Any malware or hinky programs were REMOVED before the service pack was installed.

Hope this helps.

Grif

Grif, hello.

Hope this helps.

I hope too. I will read and follow this to the last iota, I want these machines to run still until I give up the ghost. Thanks.

JP.

You posted your response in the Newbies "Tips" thread and it would be better served by moving it back to the topic here. (I'll also remove it from that location.) See below:

SP3 preparedness.
by Daopa - 6/11/10 6:31 PM In reply to: Update: Preparing Your Windows XP Computer For SP3 by Grif Thomas Moderator

Grif, I just read that post of yours and I remember reading it before and it not being relevant to my problem. See ? I am on a homebrewed machine, no Intel stuff to remove and NOTHING else to remove as it has a stark naked OS of XPP SP1, not even an anti-virus, nothing at all added to the install CD. One could not have a cleaner machine. Could I ? Let me know your opinion on this. It concerns only Athlon 32 bit OS.

Did you install XPP with a streamed SP3 ? I do not have this CD. I am trying to install from SP1.

Have a great evening. JP.
________________

Now my response..

No, I did not use a slip-streamed SP3.. In each of the cases I installed the downloadable SP3 installer for which I linked in my earlier post.. A few of the computers still had SP1 but most had SP2 fully updated. It's also important to have all the correct drivers installed for all hardware. Both XP and Vista have issues when the wrong hardware drivers fail to support the system.

And most importantly, even though all were clean and running well, I STILL performed all the steps mentioned in link.. I still cleaned out all junk files.. I still cleaned out the Temp folders. I still ran Chkdsk/Error Checking and I still ran a defrag before running the install.. (You be surprised at the amount of junk and fragmented files are included in a new install.) I then restarted the machine, unplugged any USB devices and in most cases, unplugged from the internet, then ran the SP3 standalone installer..

Hope this helps.

Grif

Hello Grif.

You wrote :And most importantly, even though all were clean and running well, I STILL performed all the steps mentioned in link.. I still cleaned out all junk files..

I do not have any of these as my just redone system was pristine. I had nothing else but XPP SP1, nada, rien, zilch ! And still the SP2 did not install.

When I get home, in the next week, there should be two CDs waiting for me, one with SP2 the orher with SP3 all streamed. I will again give it a fair chance.

In the mean time, have you googled for this problem to see what others, like I, are experiencing in this regard.

Have a great day. JP.

....After installing SP2 and SP3 on a couple hundred computers by now, and not having any of the issues mentioned, (primarily because I've prepared them all), I'll propose that it can only be the result of: 1. Faulty install of the original operating system. 2. Bad SP3 installation files. 3. Faulty install of hardware drivers. 4. Or bad hardware such as a hard drive that isn't working as designed.

It will be interesting to see how your troubleshooting goes, especially if you install the new operating system discs from scratch. Good luck.

Hope this helps.

Grif

Grif, hello.

I have always installed the SPx from scratch, thus my remarks to you about your routine to clean a machine before the install. Let me repeat that these three machines are homebrewed, new HDD, new PS and new RAM, all three of them.

You might have been lucky in using OEM machines, I do not know why, just a thought. I will keep you up when the time comes. In the mean time, I will be doing some fly-fishing for trout.

Be good. Oh ! Thanks for moving my previous post to a topical site. JP.

Hi,

I want to know whether XP SP3 is good or bad. I heard about some problems.

You would do better to create your own thread and ask this question.

Be sure to explain what you mean. Do you mean IS XP good or bad, or is SP3 for XP good or bad.

Mark

please do your research and find out why. My father and I both work on our own computers and went to college for computer repair. My father is disabled, and so am I. I am paraplegic and a shut in. My father and I depend on our computers, I am on a laptop I have had to do some work on for someone. I have been trying to fix our computers. I am at a loss, not just because of our computers but how this happened. My father and were upgrading when we lost our systems, mine only two years old. Both computers xp athalon systems. I am little upset, of course because my father and will have to be without now, It will take us along time to be able to repair or replace our systems. I am not writing for sympathy, I just want to add a different Idea to the real need and understanding the trust we put in upgrading our software. So please do me a favor and find out why. thank you

The old SP3 crash is now well documented. It rarely bites anyone today and for the HP's it did bite, the fix was too easy.

More at http://msinfluentials.com/blogs/jesper/archive/2008/05/08/does-your-amd-based-computer-boot-after-installing-xp-sp3.aspx and some THOUSAND web sites. (maybe more than 1000 by now?)

I'm wondering if you missed that news. Tell more please.
Bob

The last thing I did last night was to reset the date from 1980 to 2010. After doing that, I turned the puter off and went to bed. When I again started to work on the problem, I went to the response of the gentleman who fixed his puter problem by putting in a newer date. Bingo, it fixed my problem also thanks.

Opa_man, hello.

Your problem I faced quite a few years ago and in my advanced age, I still remember what the problem is.

Make sure that your computor clock is set right, that simple!

Let me know here is this is the solution that you seeked. JP.

Opa_man, I see that three minutes before my solution, you had found the problem. Good on you. JP.

After some years of non-use your CMOS battery was probably flat. The CMOS battery is a small nickel-sized battery that sits atop a chip on the circuit board and keeps the BIOS refreshed when the mains electric is disconnected.

When that goes flat, the BIOS loses it's time and date and so reverts to default, which I believe is some 1980 date/time. The XP OS will use that setting when it first loads up and while XP has the option to automatically check and update itself when it is online, that may not have happened when you first turned the machine back on.

It's interesting that after all this time the CMOS battery is still viable and recharges well.

Mark

Mark, a fine morning to you. In a fit of madness, you wrote :

>> It's interesting that after all this time the CMOS battery is still viable and recharges well.

These button cells do not recharge ! They are mostly alcaline, some lithium. In laptop, they are soldered in, I had to break one and solder in a replacement. The first one only lasted 11 years.

All very humbly stated. JP.

Thanks, I'll definitely check it out! - Jim

Daopa, sorry but I deleted your post.

I am not at all sure you can pass around XP Setup CDs like that without conflict with licensing laws, but in any case, this is not a market place and we don't trade in these forums.

Additionally, your email address. You will know that forum bots, (robots), trawl public forums like these for open email addresses so they can be spammed. We can't stop the bots, but we can help users here from being flooded with spam.

Mark

Hello Mark.

This offer of mine was not a "busines" promotion. I would have sent a CD free of all charges, even no stamp refund. I got lucky in life and am of good means, I like helping others, "no string attached". This CD is for all around distribution as it requires your own keys to use, no pirating at all. It is the XP OS with a streamed SP3 that anybody can do at home, simpler for a newbie than doing the streaming.

Your decision is respected, you run your show and well too. But realize that there was no personal gain involved except knowing that I was helping another user, my mantra.

Have a great day and see you here again. JP.

but Forum Policy is to refrain from trades and swaps, and things like that.

If it starts even in an innocent manner then it becomes the norm and is difficult to refuse others, but then someone will swap or offer some virus infected media that destroys another member's operating system, and CNET stands accused of facilitating transporting malware.

It's a hard policy I know, but it keeps the forums free of the problems that plague other public forums where there the checks and balances are less restrictive.

Mark

Mark, two days to go on this SP3 saga.

In the mean time, I was able to update two of my Athlon machines and they are fine. The third one must have had a hardware conflict, I must have tried at least ten times to get it to see SP2 then SP3 but I got stumped at SP2. Strange, it took SP1a like nobody's business.

It has been relegated to a test machine status, I have given it to a friend who likes to putter around on HDDs using Spinright and he only needs RAM, I gave him a 7 GBs HDD and 2 megs of RAM. He is happy with it, some good came out of this.

Thanks for letting me in, great site, great users.

Godspeed to you, JP.

i had all of these system instability issues after i did a system recovery (xp 2005)- 2wice. the problem is planned obsolescence on the part of microsoft who wants you to upgrade your entire operating system. sp2 is no less essential than sp1 for people who actually use & want to run disparate programs. you'll want to uninstall sp3 & sp2 (disallow automatic updates & check your "my computer" properties to make certain of a successful uninstall) & then reinstall sp2 (for download of SP2: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=aea55f2f-07b5-4a8c-8a44-b4e1b196d5c0&displaylang=en OR http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=aea55f2f-07b5-4a8c-8a44-b4e1b196d5c0&displaylang=en )& accept all available system updates (use the custom button & select all up dates except sp3 until the only "high priority" update available is sp3) & then allow microsoft updates to reinstall sp3 after that. you should have system stability after this provided your able to successfully download & unstall updates up until sp3 upgrade. i hope this is helpful to anyone w/ similar troubles.

If you mean the OS will die at some set date in the future, then there is no such thing.

These updates are a natural progression of improvements and security fixes that occur or are required over the life of any operating system.

There is no, 'planned obsolescence'.

Mark

Thanks for the offer, even though the forum didn't allow it! In any event, I don't think your disk would have worked for me, as my install disk is from MS Tech Net, and I think the key is only good for Tech Net disks, not standard purchased OS disks. Again, thanks for the offer - it's great when people who are strangers to one another are willing to go out of their way to offer assistance! - Jim

Hello Jim.

I have benefited so much from sites like this one that after 15 years, I have learned enough to be able to keep it going around. I had not realized that this was refrained upon, fine, nothing lost.

I there is anything else you are wanting, just pipe up. JP.