Tomorrow (April 29) is the day that M$ stated XP SP3 will be made available through Windows Update for the rest of us. I think it is important that you review the following articles to be better prepared.

Part 1 -Introduction Secret Pre-Release Details On XP SP3

Part 2 - What is SP3 & How big is it?

Part 3 - New Features in SP3

Part 4 - Previously Available Features in SP3

In the following link, M$ has identified the top 5 reasons (and their MSKB articles not yet released) for SP3 installation that is likely to fail.

Part 5 - Top Five Reasons that SP3 will fail to install

Part 6 - Issues with IE7

Part 7 - Other known Issues with SP3

Good luck to all.

i_Xp/VistaUser

Just to add - Part 6 in the link above includes footnotes on programs that may experience a change in behavior, as well as third party wireless networking drivers that may stop working, after you install SP3.

If all of the above scares you, install XP SP3 blocker NOW!

i_Xp/VistaUser

slipstreamed build 5512, installed it last night and am happy as the proverbial pig in sh*t :)

p.s.: read the schedule, it says:

Automatic Update (Windows Update) - June 10, 2008

I have been using SP3 since the 25th April and have no problems with it...

I installed SP3 on two machines Fri nite. One has had no problems whatsoever, the other throws 2 error messages about WLANAPI.DLL while the desktop is loading. I just close them & everything else is fine...the wireless interent connection still works. The card is a D-Link G510. I did some googling & found that D-Link has been aware of the problem since the beta, but were waiting for SP3 Final before implementing a fix. The problem appears to be with the D-Link software.

EDIT: I did try uninstalling & reinstalling the D-Link software, but still got the error messages. So I used MSCONFIG to prevent the D-Link entries from loading at startup...no more error messages.

"And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

nah, the problem is indeed SP3. it introduces a new file called WLANAPI.DLL, a name that is being used by several WLAN card manufactures. the new file overwriting the old one is causing the error. re-installing the original (or updated) driver will solve the problem.

Your link #3 comes up with an error, however if you go to one of the others and link from there it is ok. The difference I found is the link here adds a (tried twice to type what it shows but it won't display)

to the end, as shown below.

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle....

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle....

Also where can the sp3 blocker be found. Thanks Bluejay

You're right, bluejay. The #3 link included a code that shouldn't be listed in the URL which is why you got the "error loading page" message. Thanks for bringing it up. Below is the link for SP3 blocker.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...

By the way M$ has "just discovered" a glitch and is forced to temporarily suspend deploying SP3 via Windows Update. Read M$ announcement below (what else is new with M$ anyway?)

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet...

i_Xp/VistaUser

Direct download of SP3 (316 megs) from Microsoft here. Be aware this is a .exe file...

http://download.windowsupdate.com/m...

This is the exact same file as I got from Major Geeks last weeks.