Windows XP SP3 release just around the bend?
By Darren Murph 
posted April 15th 2008 9:03PM
posted April 15th 2008 9:03PM
Though we originally expected (read: hoped) that Microsoft would dish out Service Pack 3 for Windows XP late last month, it seems the deed may actually get done before May dawns. According to an "internal schedule" fetched over at Neowin, OEMs, volume license, Connect, MSDN and TechNet subscribers will have access to the update on April 21st, while most average joes / janes won't notice it until April 29th when it hits the Microsoft / Windows Update download center. For folks too busy carrying on to worry over which SP their XP is running, they could very well overlook the automatic update scheduled to land on June 10th. (Re)mark your calendars, won't you?[Via InformationWeek]
noobs
get vista sp1
noob, get Leopard 10.5.2
noobs, get Linux
@darklight: noob, get BSD
@edward
noob, get AmigaOS 4.0
Nine days 'till Ubuntu Hardy is released!
Don't refer people to linux. Linux is a kernel.
@idiots...
Get a Life!
noobs,
get Windows 3.1
ReactOS FTW!
(When it's out of alpha and then beta stage off-course.)
Pfft no-one could possibly care about or still be using Windows XP this long after Vista's release... oh wait...
Sorry. Couldn't help myself =[
Well, I still have to re-install XP on an annual basis.
Even on the Mac that I use now, I still feel compelled to do the same thing every few months, even though the performance is fine. I feel like I picked up a little OCD from all the XP reinstalls I've done over the years.
Neutrality disclosure:
I love XP and use it daily with Fusion and/or Bootcamp as well as on a gaming PC.
I used to use my XP for gaming, until I found out WINE actually performs better with OpenGL apps.
Google for "remove hidden devices windows xp"; When you take out a device of your pc windows actually doesn't de-install it for you. You can make these devices visible with a little work, remove them, and watch the good 'ol slugish install fly.
Looking forward to the release! :D
Will it let me choose new color schemes? I'm tired of Olive, Silver, & Blue.
It might not, but check out a uxtheme.dll patcher, and go get some visual styles off of DeviantArt or something. Some of them look really great.
wait a while after release, then get the theme patcher. the changed the uxteme.dll file so its resistant. im on the beta now, and other than piddily shit i dont even use like Adobe OnLocation and a zune video converter, everything seems to run crash free. only complaint is that the upgrade genuinely fucked my themes which i got off heylove.deviantart.com.
and to the apple "fanboys", Windows is a flavor of technology. nothing more, nothing less. so is OSX, and i have a right to like my dell, my apple slim keyboard and mighty mouse which are on it, as well as my zune with its ipod earbuds, and im not gonna flame the ipod, because it seems like a great product, but so is zune, and i just happen to like the zune more.
There are the two official theme packs, the Royale blue Media Center style and the Zune black/orange style, and then you can patch your uxtheme.dll to unlock the native skinning ability of XP. Interestingly you can do the same with Vista but personally I don't really see why you'd need to, unlike XP Vista actually doesn't look like a fisher price toy by default.
hey guys... I NEED HELP
i recently purchased a macbook pro for my mom, with windows xp on vmware fusion (like parallels). however, while installing vmware, the system froze. now i installed xp first, and then vmware (just so you know). the disk partition was corrupted, so i wiped it clean and started over, running vmware to install xp.
BUT here's my problem. i typed in the activation/serial code or whatever into the first install, but wiped out that portion of HDD to reinstall windows. now, xp wont accept the activation code, saying its already been used, and i have 30 days left to activate. workarounds?
ps. xp sp2
call microsoft and explain the problem. not that hard...
Call the activation line and say it has only been used on one computer. I'm a tech and I do it all the time. If you actually get connected to someone other than a robot then explain the actual situation.
ok thanks guys
*cough*
I don't really care about the Service Pack 3, as I already keep my system up-to-date. The main advantage I see there is slipstreaming to reduce the amount of remaining updates to apply.
Cool Windows XP SP3 is like upgrading from Vista. I can't wait to get it installed on my BootCamp partition. This should hold everyone until the release of Windows 7 or maybe even Windows 8. I also heard there was a performance increase. I'm ready for that.
Great, I'm looking forward to SP3 so I can reinstall Windows XP, it's been almost a year since I last reinstalled.
nLite ftw.
What do you mean by reistalling windows XP? or should say why do you have to reistall, cause I have XP also , and really don't know all that much or what I should do most of the time.
@ kelly
you don't have to reinstall. you can just update to SP3 when it become available in windows update. more experienced users typically reinstall their windows every now and then, i don't kno for sure why others do but i do because my system gets all out of control from installing so many things or having way too many unorganized files that i don't need and ultimately my system becomes laggy and irritating. you could just clean it out of course but its nice to start off with a fresh install for sum of us.
So did they add the feature so that when i move files of the same name to a folder windows will rename then automatically instead of having to click cancel 50,000 times? That shit gets annoying. It's 2008 MS don't you think you can add this to XP?
Yeah file copying/moving is completely rubbish in XP. And I notice it's not improved much in Vista either.
How about an 'advanced' box which gives you an output of any copy/move operations that failed at the end of the process, rather than pausing the whole thing?
Although saying that... I use RoboCopy for big copy operations. It's a front end to xcopy available from MS Sysinternals
The people I know are betting this actually makes it worse in some respects.
...although the memory usage of Windows XP is actually tolerable last time I checked, what, 9 months ago?
..whereas Vista's is.. not. Perhaps XP SP3 will be the best Microsoft OS to date.
...but really, how much is that actually saying?
God forbid you actually use all that RAM you have.
I have alread installed it of 2 machines , works fine no problems, what is all the fuss about?
Does this mean that build 5508 is sp3 rtm?
I have never had any problems with xp. I dont know what all the fuss is about.
I've never had problems with XP. It still flies on any machine built within the past 4-5 years.
So long as you're not one of those people that have a start menu that expands into like 3 columns of junk pre-installed programs ;)
SP3 will be a welcome rollup of updates though, been using the release candidates for a couple of months and have not had any problems with those.
On the XP vs Vista thing... I think people have finally realised that the OS is not the big deal. It's all about the software you use.
XP SP3 and GTA4 both released on the public on the same day, you say? How will I ever decide to do on the 29th?
@daemonios
I am THE MOST UNLUCKY GUY yes, and my pc is from 1998 has xp but right after installing the beta of SP3 my external hdd would be seen as a mass storage device but can't get into any of the files. I then tried it on my friends pc with no sp3, still corrupt. so tell me how to fix microsux mistake. oh and the sony pro duo's show up corrupt on Vista. That's how I knew. I'm no genius when it comes to computers but I do know when something fucks up everything I have.
For those of you that laughed and made jokes. I hope it FUCKING happens to YOU!
Somewhere I've read that the SP3 RC1/RC2 can't be integrated with original XP install, therefore slipstream deployment is not possible. Do you have any information whether this would be supported in the final release or not?
I'm gonna laugh if the SP3 upgrades you to Vista. Buh by fanboys!
Definitely going to be cautious with installing this. Give it a week or two to see if there are any gotchas.
1. can I install this directly from SP1?
2. what is the exact release date, as there's so many mentioned o_O
I used the SP3 RC, and it removed the ability to have an address bar in the taskbar. I hope they put it back in the final version...