After 8 years the windows service pack is again creating some serious trouble. The first major service pack trouble was in 2000. PCs running over 350Mhz of speed crashed and caused irreparable damage to the CPUs after a service pack install. This time its the windows XP service pack 3, which is causing all the trouble and the trouble is all for AMD machines.
The troubles are seeing on machines sold by HP. After the service pack install the machines are continuously rebooting and not allowing the users to enter safe mode. Microsoft has discovered the reason for this and says its a mistake committed by HP. The troubles are caused by a driver for power management.
In machines supplied by HP the windows image used on both intel and AMD machines are the same. This causes to install intel power management driver for AMD machines also. Installing the service pack will unleash the trouble of AMD machines.
The last 15 days saw a lot of drama around the windows xp service pack 3. Dates were announced for the release and then they were changed. The reason cited by microsoft was a compatibility issue with one of its retail chain management softwares. But to me it all looks like a play. This is my conspiracy theory.
Microsoft wants user feedback before they officially release the service pack. So they release versions on torrent networks and also puts them in their servers for anyone to download. Now bloggers pick it up and give extensive coverage to the news. Users download stuff and reports errors and bugs. What an innovative way to get user feed back before officially releasing the pack.
Microsofts official spokesperson said that they are not responsible for any damage caused due to installation of service packs obtained from third party sources.
Microsoft will release its third service pack for windows xp on april 29th, says trusted sources. The schedule is going to be something like this.
- April 14, 2008: Support is available for the release version of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP;
- April 21, 2008: Original Equipment Manufacturers, Volume License, Connect, and MSDN and TechNet subscribers;
- April 29, 2008: Microsoft Update, Windows Update, Download Center;
- June 10, 2008: Automatic Updates.
The service pack is expected to contain all the previous updates and can be used with a fresh installation also. After SP2 microsoft had released many updates time to time for windows XP. SP3 is expected to be a collection of all these updates.
