Windows XP SP3 Cripples Some PCs With Endless Reboots

Computerworld ^ | Friday, May 09, 2008 8:00 AM PDT | Gregg Keizer

[JSteff]

“Installed SP3 today without issue...”

Same here. Works just fine.

[VeniVidiVici]

Any ideas how to retrieve My Documents and the other files and programs that disappeared?

Other than restore from backup? Nope. You could try one of those data recovery specialists but it might be pretty expensive for no guarantee.

In the future zip them up and copy to each other's hard drive every so often. That's the easy way out. Of course you could get flash drives, ext. hard drives, etc.

[Kozak]

What an innovative way to sell more copies of Vista....

[JSteff]

“Glad I saw this before updating the home machines which ARE AMD CPU based! “

All three of my machines are AMD. NO PROBLEM.

[politicalwit]

Three AMD’s here. No problems with SP3. Installed 4 days ago.

[JoeSixPack1]

You are!

I Know :-)~~

[Liberty2007]

if you used ms system restore they are still there. right click on the start button select properities then select classic start menu. the mycomputer and my documents icons will show up

[Swordmaker]

Here’s the fix for the reboot issue just in case, it worked perfectly on various machines for me:

Thanks for the information.

Reading the comments on Computerworld shows that this may not just be a problem with AMD based machines. About a quarter of those reporting the endless looping have Intel based processors. Also, quite a few with AMDs have had not problem. It may be an incompatibility with something entirely different than the CPU.

The main thing that's important here is to have a GOOD, verified backup of your irreplaceable data before attempting installing SP3.

[RebelTex]

What your wife did was probably a manufacturer’s reset to original factory drive image (completely overwrites the drive with an image of the original from a hidden partition).

If that’s what happened, the data is gone (except for a professional recovery service). Here’s a link to the only one that I know has been around for a long time, is professional, & should be able to reconstruct your drive. It will cost several hundred $ or more. Only you can determine if it’s worthwhile.

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geu845kSZIcfgACqlXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTE0Z25tNms3BHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2FjMgR2dGlkA1BSMDIzXzExNQ—/SIG=11nobsgt9/EXP=1210573497/**http%3a//www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

Good Luck
RT

[Swordmaker]

Just an FYI - the original poster serves no purpose on FR other than to shill for Apple products and whine about Microsoft. You’re wasting your time.

Thanks for the information, Flint. I won't go into what your purpose on FR is.

[RebelTex]

One more thing - if you want to search for other recovery services, be sure to get recommendations/references from people you trust on those you find. I’m the suspicious kind and I think an ad on google, etc, would be an easy way to pull in victims for low-life hackers with evil intentions.

Just saying - watch your back.

[RepublitarianRoger2]

This is not a Microsoft problem. It is not a Windows XP SP3 problem. It is an HP problem, and an AMD motherboard problem.

Any Windows image builder with half a brain knows that you don’t use the same OS image on two different hardware platforms — especially platforms as different as AMD vs. Intel — and not expect to have problems. Different CPUs, different northbridge and southbridge chipsets, different drivers. The knucklehead system builders over at HP screwed this one up, not Microsoft.

The second problem involves the A8N32-SLI motherboard. First, SLI chipsets are on the bleeding edge of enthusiast motherboards, and have been notorious for being touchy with certain hardware devices. This particular motherboard is not even on Microsoft’s HCL yet. Most likely either a chipset driver fix or a motherboard rev is in order, not a revision to SP3.

Headline writers for tech mags love to sensationalize these things, and anti-Microsoft people eat it up and spew it all over the Net as “proof” that Microsoft “goofed again.” The fact is, from all reports thus far, SP3 works just fine on anything but (a) a PC put together by some HP idiots who tried to cut corners on image building by using the same image for two different platforms, or (b) a bleeding edge ASUS SLI enthusiast motherboard.

[Beckwith]

AMD-equipped PCs sold by Hewlett-Packard Co

Gee - - I got one of those????

[RckyRaCoCo]

I installed it yesterday. Only problem I got on reboot was losing my wireless connection which just took a quick fix. Didn’t really have time to check for any effects but the little bit of gaming I did afterwards, well, it seemed a bit slower. Maybe i’ll run a 3DMark test or something just to see if it’s just my imagination.

[BikerJoe]

“Installed SP3 today without issue...” Same here. Works just fine.

I've installed it on thirteen machines so far. Only one (a laptop) had a problem. For some reason, it hosed the wireless network. Uninstall, and the wireless comes back. Did it several times. Very repeatable.

Much better than my Vista SP1 experiences. Out of four machines, TWO have had significant problems resulting from the SP1 installation!!!!!

[05 Mustang GT Rocks]

Thank you.

[05 Mustang GT Rocks]

I think wifey did the Compaq restore, because the My Docs folder is there just empty. I’ll try, though.

[05 Mustang GT Rocks]

Thanks, RT. I’ll see if the wife wants to do it.

[Uncle Meat]

I have an AMD 2800+chip and a DFI motherboard on a homemade machine and didn’t have a lick of trouble with SP3.On the other hand,I download the SP2 for vista a couple of weeks ago on my wife’s Dell laptop with an AMD 64 and it did reboot once by itself the other day.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I must be special.

No. Just normal. This is just some Windows F.U.D. that is getting to be tiresome.

I've imaged then applied SP3 to four separate machines of completely different hardware and somewhat different OS configs and have had no problems whatsoever with SP3.

The only hiccup so far is the inability of Automatic Updates to complete the process...but I think that was because the two machines I tried it on were without the WGA crap that needed to be added first.