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Harry Waldron - IT Security

Security Developments, Software Updates and Best Practices

Windows XP SP3 - Read all prerequisites for a successful installation

Computer The XP SP3 installation upgrades have worked well for me on three systems and they should for most users.   A service pack represents a major upgrade of operating system or product binaries and should be performed in a cautious manner.  

Some best practices for a successful installation of XP SP3 (or any major software install) include:  

-- Read the Internet Explorer prerequisite information (e.g., IE 6 and IE 8 users are affected -- IE 8 must be uninstalled first and IE 6 users will return to IE 7 if they choose to uninstall XP SP3 later)
 -- The "standalone" version for professionals is a huge download (312MB). I had 3 PCs to update and that made it beneficial to use the full version (plus I wanted to archive this as a future backup).  For just a single PC, the Windows Update facility provides a more efficient download as it only retrieve only the SP components needed based on the PC configuration.  
 -- Once you're ready to install, reboot your system for a fresh start
 -- Shutdown all possible applications that automatically start-up
 -- Disable your Anti-virus software
 -- Optional, you may want to temporarily disconnect from the Internet on home PCs to avoid any potential interruptions (only if you're using the standalone version)
 -- XP SP3 requires considerable disk space (1GB or more of free space needs to be available). Make certain you have enough free temporary space. If your hard drive is almost full, use the disk clean-up tool and delete all unneeded items.
 -- Start the XP SP3 install process and read/accept the various prompts offered
 -- Do not use your system for any other activity while it's running
 -- Be patient as the update process could require 30 to 60 minutes depending on system speed, free space, and other factors
 -- Reboot your system as prompted
 -- After the final settings have been made following the reboot, I usually perform an additional reboot to test out the change and to give the PC a fresh start after applying the service pack.

It's important to read and research all prerequisites prior to installing.  For example, as I'm currently testing Internet Explorer 8 beta, I discovered it must uninstalled before you can apply the XP SP3 upgrade.  After XP SP3 is installed IE 8 was reinstalled.  

Internet Explorer Prerequisites - A must read for XP SP3
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/05/05/ie-and-xpsp3.aspx

Excellent resource for Windows XP SP3 links and information 
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=208460

Microsoft Forums - XP SP3 issues can be reviewed or reported here:
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=2010&SiteID=17

Other XP SP3 Issues - A few systems have experienced constant reboot issues
http://msinfluentials.com/blogs/jesper/archive/2008/05/08/does-your-amd-based-computer-boot-after-installing-xp-sp3.aspx
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9084418

May 13, 2008 Update: The following blog entry provides an excellent overview of most current issues:

Shaun Cassells Blog - Some XP SP3 Users Experience Crashes, Mostly Due to OEM Problems
http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/scassells/archive/2008/05/12/some-xp-sp3-users-experience-crashes-mostly-due-to-oem-problems.aspx

QUOTE: While Windows XP is receiving some bad press due to the crashes, again, it appears that most of the crashes are due to hardware issues stemming from unsupported configurations, and thus the blame fall largely to the PC manufacturers, and the makers of component drivers. Fortunately, the majority of the problems have easy fixes that do not even requiring uninstalling the Service Pack.

Similar problems occurred with Windows Vista SP1, though in that case the blame ended up resting with a Microsoft pre-install update.  It is fairly typical for a Service Pack to take some computers out of commission, particularly one for an OS with as large an operating base and as varied a hardware environment as Windows XP.  Nonetheless, such problems are serious concerns for users affected, and those potentially at risk.

Posted: May 08 2008, 09:57 PM by Harry Waldron | with 29 comment(s)

Comments

Xul said:

We are lost with XP SP3. We were so happy with SP2 and now

we must go back to the "ONE and only SP2".

1. Anybody coud tell why the device list disappears so we can not control our drivers any more?

2. Why the ENUM values for the devices in the registry are all

corrupted after SP3 "Installation Complete". Who took care of this

corruption? Was it planned?

It´s amazing how somebody pulls our legs.

Congratulations WU this time you did it for good.

# May 13, 2008 10:54 AM

Windows XP SP3 Failure with Spyware Doctor 5.5 or earlier - Notebooks.com Forums said:

Pingback from  Windows XP SP3 Failure with Spyware Doctor 5.5 or earlier - Notebooks.com Forums

# May 18, 2008 12:29 PM

Best Practices For A Successful Installation of XP SP3 said:

Pingback from  Best Practices For A Successful Installation of XP SP3

# May 18, 2008 10:45 PM

David Lawrie said:

Late version Google Desktop Search is reported as failing after SP3 is applied.

(I use v5.1, and installed SP3 with IE7 already installed- no problems so far).

# May 19, 2008 8:01 PM

XP Pro system requires SP 1 to install SP3 - TechEnclave said:

Pingback from  XP Pro system requires SP 1 to install SP3 - TechEnclave

# June 11, 2008 3:22 AM

GEORGE J said:

I DOWNLOADED SP3 AND IT KNOCKED OUT ALL OF MY DEVICE MANAGERS AND MY WIRLESS TO ONE OF THREE COMPUTERS. MOW DO I RESTORE - I ALREADY DELETED SP 3 - COMPUTER IS ON WINDOWS XP.

# June 24, 2008 8:31 PM

THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA" said:

A huge thank you for this follow up to an issue that impacted Remote Web Workplace. The issue was that

# June 28, 2008 3:35 PM

THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA" said:

A huge thank you for this follow up to an issue that impacted Remote Web Workplace. The issue was that

# June 28, 2008 6:13 PM

THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA" said:

A huge thank you for this follow up to an issue that impacted Remote Web Workplace. The issue was that

# June 28, 2008 6:22 PM

MowGreen said:

To Xul and George J --- the issues you both describe are caused by a Symantec product actively monitoring the system during the application of SP3:

www.huliq.com/.../symantec-admits-fault-windows-xp-sp3-registry-corruption

Device Manager may not show any devices and Network Connections may not show any network connections after you install Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3)

support.microsoft.com/.../953979

Hotfix available in the above article

FAQ: Upgrading to Windows XP Service Pack 3 or Windows Vista Service Pack 1 with your Norton 2008 product installed

solutions.symantec.com/.../symcu_defcontent_view.asp

Symantec registry cleanup tool available in above link

# July 8, 2008 2:24 PM

Jimmie Lipps said:

I have known for a while that something was wrong with my PC. I downloaded IE 8

with Service  Pak 3 and AOL is as a home page all doubled scripted with double texlines and you can not really read it. My online high speed host has no problems.

I am going to uninstall IE 8 and only hope my IE 7 will be restored if it is then I will

uninstall Sp 3 and reinstall IE 8 then reinstall Sp 3. I wish I had known that Service Pak 3 was for IE 6.0 before installing version 7. I do not know if I will be ok doing

this but right now I am close to crashing my system and no one knows what the problem is, if I had gotten E-Mail from this site I would have saved myself DAYS

of trying to figure out what the problem was.

I also did not KNOW that you cannot install IE 7 with SERVICE PAK 2 installed.

# July 13, 2008 12:16 AM

Howard Walker said:

If this update has so many pre-requisites, why is it allowed to be installed automatically. Surely it is up to Microsofts software to do a check to see that all pre-requisites are in place before it tries to install. I have tried to install it about 10 times using MS update as well as downloading the thing. With anti virus turned off, and with it removed from the system. It still just loops around for 24 hours doing nothing! All the hints that I can find from the net have been examined with no success. Looks like a phone call to Microsoft is the only answer. Ring +44 870 60 10 100 to talk to the man himself.

# July 17, 2008 11:32 AM

PC Security said:

If your looking for even more information on PC security then I would head over here as they have plenty of stuff on identity theft, antivirus software etc.

# July 17, 2008 4:39 PM

DiAnne Herbert said:

Great information and super help.  I am going to print this off and follow the helpful information.  I have been racking my gray matter trying to figure out what the problem was.  I thought I had done all that was necessary before trying to add SP3, apparently not.

Thanks again for this blog and all the Q&A.

DiAnne Herbert

birdi2006@gmail.com

# September 2, 2008 11:01 AM

jon c with big probles said:

my internet won show whats in my inter box i keep getting a mesage saying internet  add-ons are dissabled what is a add-on and how do i inable them some one please help

# September 15, 2008 1:13 PM

Dean M said:

I continually fail to install XP SP3 with the same error every time... Not enough space. I have over 5 GB of disk left and yet it still tells me I need more space. I even removed a number of programs to get it to 8 GB left of disk and it still says the same thing. I just don't get it. And reading above all the bad comments, in some way I'm glad it didnt install. I will stay on SP2 until they fix the problem.

# September 18, 2008 2:45 AM

SKYMAN said:

My laptop does auto updates and when I did the update and came back to my laptop after a few minutes, my laptop went dead. It has power, but the screen is "black" and my mouse doesn't even come on. Why did this update distroy my laptop? It's like I have lost everything with no help. I wish I knew about these problems before hand and I wouldn't of even let this SP3 be downloaded. SO.....the question is? How the hell do I get my Laptop to work again? Microsoft needs to be held accountable for this and get me a Laptop or some sort of recall to get it fixed!!!

# September 18, 2008 7:25 PM

Harry Waldron said:

Hi - Yes, there are some compatibility issues in using SP3 that have been documented.  HP systems for example have had issues, plus some AV products may not work well.

This search might help in finding support for these various issues:

search.msn.com/results.aspx

# September 19, 2008 11:21 AM

Carl L said:

I tried six times to install SP3.  The download took forever, and each time, during installation, I hit a point where I got a screen saying that for SP3 Setup, "Access is Denied."   With 9 hours on phone help from Dell, they figured out that I needed to disable both the Norton Antivirus and the SpySweeper, even though I asked about it a number of times.  It finally installed.  That caused my AOL software to get corrupted, and now I can't online with my PC.  I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling AOL, with no  success.  It constantly says it's missing files, so click "here" to restore the missing files, but it does nothing instead.  I'm using a different PC in the interim until I can figure it out.  

# September 23, 2008 5:56 AM

Harry Waldron said:

Carl - Thanks for sharing this great advice ... Yes, during installation it might be advisable to disable Antivirus software and also to not do anything else on the PC except to allow it to install in a dedicated mode.

# September 24, 2008 8:22 AM

James E. Carroll said:

Error code is  0x8007F070

Have tried just about everything to install sp3, but it fails.  I searched that error code,  0x8007F070, on MS and on this blog and got no hits, so I thought I would use it so that it would appear as a search term in case others might have solutions or others have had similar problems.

# October 3, 2008 5:23 PM

Lauren said:

I am rolling out XP SP3 to about 6,000 desktops.

i have rolled out to about 675 desktops and laptops so far successfully; however i have had 14 bluescreens.

these systems that had a bluescreen DO NOT have a non-Intel processor.  the Dell models are listed below:

1-Latitude D620

2-Optiplex GX620

3-Optiplex GX620

4-Latitude D620

5-Latitude D610

6-Optiplex GX620

7-Optiplex GX620

8-Optiplex GX620

9-Optiplex GX620

10-Latitude D620

11-Latitude D620

12-Optiplex GX620

13-Optiplex GX620

14-Latitude D620

however i have many machines that i deployed SP3 to successfully that are those same modes.

i am not having trouble getting the systems back on line either by repairing or reimaging.  however, i would like to know what the problem is to prevent it from happening anymore.  i still have about 5,000 to push XP SP3 to, and i really can't have 14 bluescreens every 600 machines.

:(

# October 6, 2008 3:17 PM

Eldon said:

I, too, have tried multiple times since August to install SP3.  The download does take forever, and so does the Uninstall. Like Carl L above, each time during installation I hit a point where I get, "Access is Denied." I've gone to the Solutions page support.microsoft.com/.../949377 and so far that's no help. I've disabled PC-cillin AV, Spybot and Pop-Up Killer, and restarted several times. Nothing works. I'm not about to copy off a whole bunch of code from the Solutions page (Method 3) and drop it into my registry just because MS says so. This is supposed to be an Auto-Update. How the heck can it auto-update when it's so screwed up?

# October 13, 2008 4:00 PM

Dominic said:

Re SKYMAN

I think you are jumping the gun, and blaming sp3 for possibly another issue. Try a few things before completely deciding its a sp3 issue. Hook your laptop to an external monitor and try using your laptops function key to switch to the other display. Try booting in safemode... edit the boot ini.. and add the /basevideo tag.

# October 28, 2008 4:10 AM

joe90 said:

Where is it stated that the Scherzo from Beethoven's 9th Symphony is a prerequisite to SP3?

# November 3, 2008 3:05 AM

Seas said:

It seams to me the only feedback here is from those

whom have wanted to update to SP3 and done so.

But then find the known issues that they would know

were mentioned if they had read before aplying the

update.

Where is the feedback from those who had good

luck?? I know they out number the ones with problems.

Just had to add that!! Haste makes waste..

# November 20, 2008 8:46 PM

Melody said:

I'm trying to install SP3, and I consistently get "download failed." Access is denied. After reading the prerequisites, I've tried disabling my anti-visur software. However, I right-click on the antivirus icon but see no "disable" option... only uninstall. What should I do?

In addition, I have virus that has affected oleacc.dll, which is preventing me from installing anything. The reason I'm trying to download SP3, is so that I can later download oleacc.dll and finally install the antivirus software that is supposed to be able to get rid of this virus (virtumonde).

Sigh... at this point, I'm almost resigned to just reformatting the whole thing and being done with it. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

# November 24, 2008 7:08 PM

msgill said:

My two machines HP Desktop D 530 and Mac book pro (XP in partition) automatically installed SP3 twice and freeze both machines. I followed the pre-requisite and later instructions twice and ultimately removed Sp3 twice as my Device Manager and IE7 totally stop working. After removing installed net adapter drivers from CD and now have peace of mind and glad to get rid of it. It is still lying in Mac book pro but whenever it appeared to install kill it. Wasted my hours and hours and thanks God my systems are saved.

# December 1, 2008 11:41 AM

John Butler said:

I have tried to install SP3 on some 200 XP Pro + SP2 systems. My experience is that some new systems without much other software than email and Word accept the installation without problems. Most others do not, probably all AMD machines cannot use SP3 nor can those that have Office Pro 2007 Mulitlanguage Suite, Photoshop CS >> or Nero 7>>.

If your SP3 does not work it is not worth tyring a second time, just restore your system from backup (you MUST backup your system before trying to install SP3, do not rely on System Restore) you can spend hours attempting to fix it without succes and if you do you have not gained much over SP2. Bear in mind that Microsoft DOES NOT WANT TO  KEEP XP going and are trying force users to upgrade,

John

# April 18, 2009 10:09 AM