I've updated my laptop to SP3 and never experienced problems with my wireless so I cannot comment on the ill effects of this service pack.
If there's a driver issue then re-install, if there's no technical support for XP SP3 then people should switch to a different brand.
Reverting back to SP2 is running away from the problem which may in fact have a solution if you look for it.
Anyway in regards to Defraggler I see no reason why SP3 should be implicated it's nothing more than a bundle of all security / bug fixes for SP2 rolled into one.
Programs crash for many reasons, usually due to unhandled circumstances such as file system or conflicts with security / av products, incompatibility with SP3 should had created sudden death.
Richard S.
Service Pack 3 is computer specific.
The good about SP3 is this:
- An average of 10% faster performance
- Slightly faster finish speeds for programs
- Patches are slightly more up-to-date
- Better network collaboration
- Easier network administration
The bad:
- On some computers, they fail to boot at all, even in safe mode, after installing SP3
- Sometimes network connections stop working for a while under SP3, but uninstalling it will make it disappear.
- Games, such as Crysis, work a big slower & have lag under SP3.
- There are lots of software programs that are incompatible with SP3 that work fine under SP2.
There are a lot of bugs, including some that I have seen personally, & some that others have seen such as AMD machines crash after SP3 install, Windows crashes, continuous reboots/blue screens, among other things.
This happens whether a computer has a fresh, clean install of windows, or windows is months old. It happens on brand new high speed machines, or older machines.
Per Hazel's instructions, I cannot advise you not to use SP3, as, bugs & all, it is, after all, the "latest & greatest" from Microsoft.
But using SP3 is like playing the lottery. Sometimes it works on some machines & configurations, while sometimes it does not. SP2, in my experience, is far more stable & in general, just works with almost anything you throw at it. However, stick to Hazel's advice & always use the latest service pack no matter what, because that is guaranteed to be the best.
I would still love to know what Hazel would have done to solve it.
Let me address your following concerns above:
- "If there's a driver issue then re-install" > This was using the latest Belkin wireless router driver they had... Not an option
- "If there's no technical support for XP SP3 then people should switch to a different brand" > This doesn't always work? For example: Vista, even with tech support, has problems. I tried taking a Philips 1 GB mp3 player to back up the music to a 1 GB flash drive that was freshly formatted. There was only 500 mb music. Vista stalled out halfway through & complained that the flash drive was full, so it cannot copy it over. I could, however, select smaller batches & it would work. Additionally, Vista lost a host of file sorting capabilities that XP has. MS never will add those back to XP. XP also could copy the entire batch when I checked, without any problem. Why use junk just because it is "supported"? Vista is known to have a ton of bugs. Windows 7 is much better than Vista, but it still has trouble running things that work fine on XP. Additionally, XP is faster than Vista, even on newer machines. Windows 7 is better than Vista, but XP still is the fastest on certain areas. Vista also was known to be formulated based on Trusted Computing Platform, which in layman's terms, was singlehandedly one of the reasons it crashed so much initially, because they had to figure a way to integrate a hardware system of flags to prevent you from being able to display "untrusted" video sources in addition to using anything to make a backup of movies you owned, or software you owned that was in danger of being scratched up/permanently gone due to not being produced by the manufacturer any longer. Video companies, especially, struggled with this issue. Because of the TCP platform requirements introduced to control what you do on your machine, it caused early versions of Firefox to crash every few min. TCP is easy to find & google. The hardware flag was intended to operate such that if any video contained a do not copy flag, your machine will refuse to clone a disk. Effectively stripping all the power & control from you, & putting the control back into the seller's hands. You would pay for a computer, but everyone else would own it. You would pay for an OS, but the OS would control what you did. I haven't researched the TCP of Windows 7 yet to see if they got around to that, or if consumers complained enough that they learned their lesson. If you haven't, you should google TCP & Vista. Very, very interesting. And also very, very true. I am not certain if they still do it, will have to research/test more later... Another good reason to stick with XP. Windows Vista/7 also make it hard or impossible to drag the top corner of an open folder to the desktop/flash drive/other to create a shortcut to that folder. In addition to many other annoyances.
I am not sure I would say stick with XP though, because Hazel just may want you to stick with Vista or Windows 7, since they are newer, & a DRM'd + TCP computer may be lots better for you than a non DRM/TCP machine. I am not certain if you even want to copy/clone movies or games. Maybe you just want a basic computer that burns regular content. Maybe you do not even play games. Or watch movies? I recommend you update to W7 to be sure that you have the latest & most patched system. I would never want to imagine what Hazel would think of me if I even suggested XP, so I recommend the latest & greatest. I am not even suggesting that the DRM is not possible to work around, or that it just sometimes causes problems that do not exist in XP. XP is not perfect, after all, but It seems stable/usable/fast to me. Not that Vista & W7 cannot run reasonably fast, but tests & games show improved response under XP.
Now, you did not specify, but assuming that you just meant to switch hardware brands instead of software, this was not an option. They had paid for the router, & it was past the date they could return it for a swap. Not everyone is made of $$$ like you, my friend.
- "Reverting back to SP2 is running away from the problem which may in fact have a solution if you look for it." > It may, it may! Please do show me the solution? It is running away from the problem? It may be running away, but why is it that SP2 works solid as a rock with it, but SP3 always kills it off? Clean install of XP SP3 just doesn't work properly with this particular WIFI connection, while SP2 works like a dream. Please, help me, send me the solution. I would love to know... Unfortunately, it is well documented that on some systems, SP3 wreaks havoc with WIFI & other utilities. Google is testimony to the fact that there are tons of others with the exact same problem & the fact that like me, thousands of others had their WIFI come back after a revert. But, alas, sadly, it is running away from the problem to revert to SP2, so I should really just upgrade to SP3 so my WIFI can drop every couple minutes or so.... Actually, it is my friends WIFI. Instead of talking about how it is running away from the problem, would you be so kind as to post a workable solution? I will listen to it, honest. If it works, I will let you know.
- "Anyway in regards to Defraggler I see no reason why SP3 should be implicated it's nothing more than a bundle of all security / bug fixes for SP2 rolled into one." > This is an intermittent problem. Defraggler works fine on some SP3 systems, while on others SP3 causes problems. Perhaps due to the way SP3 changes how XP addresses hardware & software?
- "Programs crash for many reasons". > I 100% agree with you!
- "usually due to unhandled circumstances such as file system"... > This happened on their machine reguardless of using Fat 32, NTFS, or a clean install, so it would not be file system errors!
- "or conflicts with security / av products" > It did not matter if there were security products on the machine, or a clean install with no security products, with or without any router security passwords used. Of course, it does have a password on it, I was just testing... So no, it is not due to security product incompatibility as my clean install disk doesn't have anything integrated with XP other than the SP2 or SP3.
- "incompatibility with SP3 should had created sudden death" > Service Pack 3 doesn't always make a computer endlessly loop reboots, or crash, or fail to boot up. Sometimes it just drops WIFI internet signals for no reason whatsoever. SP2 never does this. In my experience, SP2 is far more stable, while SP3 has bug fixes & is, well, buggy to boot!
To sum this up, while SP2 may have fixed my problems, I still recommend you keep SP3 no matter what. If your screen freezes, hey, it could be a driver issue. Or incompatible hardware. Or SP3 bugs. Just keep SP3. Don't worry about SP2. SP2 is losing MS support, so it is automatically trash... This means that SP3 is, & always will be better than SP2. Besides, you should be able to fix any problem that SP3 may have. Should be pretty easy, I would think. Simple driver update, or perhaps a brand new router, or, try another security product, or mess with windows day after day tweaking settings & changing files till you find the culprit!
Maybe it is just registry settings? Piece of cake, I mean, it can't be that hard. Fire up regedit, navigate to the software key, or use the built in search key if needed, & just mod the reg keys as needed...
Once MS stops support, then you need to update to the latest windows version.
Which for now, is Windows 7 with XP compatibility mode. Never trade down, always trade up. Even if some of your programs that work in XP no longer do under Windows 7. There are programs that don't even work under Windows 7, even under XP SP2 compatibility mode that work under XP SP2 genuine. Windows 7 also has a much harder to use interface to search flash or external drives for files, + the search it does have doesn't find all the files on your computer. This is trash, because if you have certain files you need to pull up, even with music, MP3 files... Windows 7 totally ignores some files! But so does Vista!
Windows Vista & 7 give you the results they want you to have. Sure, I know about advanced search, & show hidden files, system files, etc, but I have used Windows 7 & Vista (not the home or the basic version, either) enough to know that basically, they just lack a lot in a lot of areas. XP search will find whatever files you have. Of course, there are free utilities to fix that, such as lightning fast Locate 32... Maybe you love having half baked features, but I don't. But I am sure that many think that W7 is the best, so use it if you like it better.
Whew, this is so long! But I had to tell you it all so you can understand. Never trade down, always up. Losing programs you use are nothing. Having the latest version is always the best because MS said so & you better buy it. I heard a funny joke once about how Microsoft combined the best features of windows CE, + ME, + NT & came up with CEMENT. Hard as a rock & dumb as a brick.
It seems that while stability rises through succeeding generations of Windows, that usability takes a hit for the worse. I think that joke must be coming true! Haha!
I am sleepy & I had to work hard today in the heat, but I will check later to hear your reply. Of interest to me, is hearing what kind of solution you would have presented. Let me know how you would have fixed it for them using SP3 & I will be glad to try it. Please don't say by getting a new router, because they cannot afford it right now.
I will check back later to see your solution. I will be glad to hear from you.
Oh, yes! P.S. This was the last version of SP3 that was supposed to have some of the bugs worked out. This was not the earlier editions of SP3 that ""were not ready" at the time. This was considered official & final by MS...
Don
Of interest to read... > http://www.pcworld.com/article/146228/symantec_blames_microsoft_for_xp_sp3_registry_corruption.html
Symantec Thursday said it was Microsoft's code that crippled some PCs after upgrades to Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) emptied Device Manager, deleted network connections, and packed the Registry with thousands of bogus entries.
"We finally got to the bottom of this last night," said Dave Cole, Symantec's senior director for product management of its consumer software. "All of these problems are related to the same thing, a Microsoft file that created all the garbage entries [in the registry]."
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207600950
Within hours of its release, Microsoft's Service Pack 3 for Windows XP began drawing hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their PCs.
The problems with XP SP3, according to posters on Microsoft's Windows XP message board, range from spontaneous reboots to outright system crashes.
"My external disks are having trouble starting up, which results in Windows not starting up," complained user Michael Faklis, in a post Wednesday. "After three attempts [to install XP SP3] with different configurations each time, System Restore was the only way to get me out of deep s**t," said 'Doug W'.
Another user said the service pack prevented him from starting his computer. "I downloaded and installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals," wrote 'Paul'. "Now I can't get the computer to boot."
Dozens of other posters reported similar problems...
Peace. Don't forget to tell me the solution! Night!