Windows XP SP3

Nothing too ground-breaking here, just some info on XP Service Pack 3 that I wanted to post.  It should be available for pretty much everybody to install now via Windows Update.  If you haven’t taken the time, read the fine print when you fire off Windows Update.  There should be a link to "Microsoft Update", which allows you to also pull down updates for other Microsoft products other than just Windows.  Examples include Office updates, SQL Server updates, etc.  You’ll need to pay attention to the top of the screen if pop-ups are blocked and allow the Microsoft Update components to install.

Network Installation of XP Service Pack 3

For those who are responsible for installing SP3 in multiple machines, it’s much more efficient to just skip the Windows/Microsoft updater route and just pull down all the bits and either mount them on the network, put ’em on a thumb drive or even burn them to a CD and sneaker-net them around and install the service pack.  You can download all of SP3 for such installation here.

Preventing Installation of XP Service Pack 3

In some cases, it might be prudent to delay the installation of SP3.  In our case, we have a piece of lab equipment that may or may not like the SP3 bits.  It’s working fine now and we’re not looking to muck up the works.  Another case is when OEM’s like HP mistakenly loaded Intel-specific services on some of their AMD-based boxes and installing the service pack resulted in endless reboots as Mary Jo Foley points out.  HP has a work-around on their site.

In these scenarios, you can pull down and implement the Windows Service Pack Blocker Toolkit.  This will temporarily prevent Windows Update from sneaking SP3 on your system for up to a year.  As SP3 is mostly a roll-up of previous hot-fixes and patches, it should be relatively safe to block SP3 if need be.

Slipstreaming Service Pack 3

Finally, nobody wants to pave their system and have to install XP SP2 and THEN install XP SP3.  We’d much rather have the SP3 goodness baked into the install CD to start with.  Paul Thurrott has a write-up on slipstreaming SP3 into your installation CD on his SuperSite for Windows.

Doug White