Having run three PC's for nearly 5 years without a format and reinstall, I prepared for the final SP3 release with a cleanup and file save, then formated out two of the three systems C drives, and installed a slipstreamed version of XP pro SP3. Aside from a few refusals to restart correctly (after installing some software or drivers, it got to the background screen but explorer didn't load) I have had no problems, Each system only did it once (deamon tools on one and ATI graphics on the other) and a restart from the front of the case made it go away. Both times the software said it had to restart the pc to load. On the original Daemon tools, after the restart it froze at the background screen but loaded after a forced restart. The same was true for the ATI graphics, it said after restarting it would preform some tests and after resstarting it froze just like the Daemon tools install. A forced resart for the graphics though never did run the tests. In case your wondering the system with daemon tools had nvidia graphics so the same thing didn't happen twice. And when I installed Daemon tools on the system with ATI graphics it went smooth, go figure.
On the tuesday apr 29 when MS was supposed to have released SP3 for download I went to the update site and there was nothing there but a new updater, WGA and the malicious software tool.
So far I'm happy but I can't tell you how much is from a fresh install and how much from SP3. OH! my Windows Media Player (version 9 from a fresh install) works fine.
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