JayZJay

On my primary PC, I now use Windows Vista SP1. However, I was running Windows XP SP3 for a while and my kids PC is running XP SP3. My wife's work laptop is also running XP SP3. In my experience, it seemed like SP3 slowed the system a tad more than SP2 and it seemed liked I had a few weird issues. With my kids' PC or my wife's work laptop, nothing obvious stands out as a negative against SP3. Now, all of that said, from the very beginning there have been documented issues with SP3 and there were people that clearly ran into problems. Many people have found that they had quirky issues with SP3 and I've seen quite a few benchmarks showing that systems were a tad slower in general with SP3. There was also the well documented issue (http://tinyurl.com/WinXP-SP3-AMD) with SP3 "killing" many AMD processor based PCs. I'm guessing that has all been worked out, but I'm not sure. Another issue that has caused many people to go back to SP2 or stay at SP2 is that SP3 removes the "Address" bar option from the Taskbar. As many of you might know, if you right-click on the Taskbar, there is an option for "Address". Many people like myself use this all the time in Windows XP. If you install SP3, this option is removed. You can replace a DLL file and usually get it back, but it can be tricky (even if you have the DLL file). The only other option is a 3rd party application that gives you something similar... one example is at http://www.muvextoe.com. Finally, another reason why some people avoid SP3 is that it really doesn't add much beyond SP2. Sure, if you re-installing a system from scratch, then SP3 will save you some hassle because it has many updates and patches that SP2 does NOT (after all, SP3 is a true service pack). SP3 does add a few "features", but they are only really beneficial to those in a corporate environment. Paul Thurrott at http://www.WinSupersite.com talked a lot about the difference between SP2 and SP3 when SP3 was coming and finally released. The bottom line is a person running SP2 and an up-to-date system doesn't really have much of a benefit in installing SP3. Well, that is unless something like Paint.NET requires SP3. I personally would not go out of my way to install SP3 when reinstalling a system. In fact, when re-installing my kids' PC, I was planning on going back to SP2. Something like Paint.NET requiring it would probably be the only reason I would put SP3 back on. I hope that helps and provides some insight. -JayZJay :wink: