Just a heads up. Windows released it SP3.

Download Link: http://www.soft32.com/download_123572.html

You guys might not want to download it just yet though. It still has some bugs, a major one being the Endless Restart Loop. This actually happened to me a couple of minutes ago. After I installed it and restarted my computer, my computer would continuously get to the Windows Logo screen, then restart. I tried going into Safe Mode and the Last Known Good Configuration, but my computer still restarted shortly after. I looked the solution up online and will outline (more indepth than what I read online) it below.

Step 1. Start your computer with the Windows Disc in your CD Drive. *If you don't have the disc in your drive; start your computer, put the disc in your disc drive, and restart or let Windows restart using the restart loop.*

Step 2. When it prompts you to press a button to boot from CD Drive, press any key.

Step 3. Wait while the Windows blue screen (Not the Blue Screen of Death) loads files.

Step 4. After it finishes loading file, you should be at the Windows Startup Screen. Press "R" or "F10" to go into the Recovery Console.

Step 5. Once in the Recovery Console it should say:

[blockquote]The Recovery Console provides system repair and recovery functionality.
Type EXIT to exit the Recovery Console and restart your computer.

1: C:\WINDOWS[/blockquote]

The C:\WINDOWS part takes a couple of seconds to appear. Then it should say underneath all this:

[blockquote]Which Windows Installation would you like to log on to
(To cancel, press ENTER)[/blockquote]

Step 6. The number it's looking for should be the number "1". I assume "1" is associated with an ADMIN Account. Press enter after entering "1"

Step 7. It should then ask for your ADMIN account password. If you have a password you use in for the Windows Login Screen, type it in. If you don't use a password, just press Enter.

Step 8. Now you should be able to type freely on the Command Line. Type "COPY C:\WINDOWS\SERVICEPACKFILES\i386\gdi32.dll C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\gdi32.dll" and hit Enter. Don't use the quotation marks and there is a space between the two commands *a space as in "\gdi.dll (space) C:WINDOWS\S...".

Step 9. It'll ask if you want to overwrite, hit "Y" and press Enter.

Step 10. Restart your computer.

This should work, it worked for me. Let's just hope this doesn't happen to you, or Windows SP3 gets updated. I downloaded it from the download link above, because it looked like the only place to download it. Windows might update the SP3 and use a different link for it.

Hah. And I was gonna try this to fix my bugs...


guess not.

I heard it's faster, and would like to see it for myself. Can't be any worse than the service pack vista got.

I haven't really noticed a difference. Oh and Typhoon, it's not like because the bug happened the SP3 won't work or anything. You can still download and install it and if you happen to get this bug, it's a pretty quick fix and once it's fixed you'll have Windows SP3 installed. It was just a little oversight on a dll file on windows part.

I installed it myself and have had no problems. Can't really comment on performance or reliability since I haven't seen any real difference between SP2 and SP3.

Download it and find out, it's not like it's a system destroying bug, just some people have to do 5 minutes of stuff to get it running. I think it may be people who didn't have SP2 updated all the way and installed Sp3? I'm not sure though.

You can create a windows recovery disk, or download an image for one online.

It's for XP, silly. Vista is still in SP1.

NP you didn't... you didn't download XP SP3 and install it did you? I don't even know if you can install it on Vista.

I doubt SP3 was made to INCREASE PERFORMANCE AND MAX UR RAM POWERS. No guys, it's just a huge package with updates so you don't have to wait forever on the microsoft update site when you do a fresh install. Slipstream it to your SP2 disk and you'll save yourself a lot of time in the future.

HOW TO: create a bootable XP SP3 CD

(Just in case you are wondering, the whole thing will fit on a standard 700 MB blank CD.)

Heh, I had to slipstream sp2 so my computer could actually install windows (didn't have the pci-e drivers or something idk). Slipstreaming is a really good idea. Thanks bringing it up and linking to a guide buddy.

EDIT: Instead of using Bart's Boot Image Extractor, I think I just used PowerISO.

i just upgraded to this last night.  I haven't really noticed anything different, but I haven't had any problems with it so far, so we'll see