Today, USA Today carried the report about Windows XP SP2 updates are stopping this week. This worries me, because our three desktop machines at home (1 HP, 2 eMachines, all AMD Athelons) are still at XP2. Before you ask why, the reason is that, shortly after SP2 was released, there were numerous problems with installing the updates on AMD machines, in particular, on HP machines where XP was preinstalled.
Here are some reports on the problem:
- Microsoft Halts XP SP3 Update to HP PCs Running AMD Processors (PCWorld)
- XP SP3 Crashes Some AMD Machines (Slashdot)
- Windows XP: FYI: Support for XP with SP2 will end on July 13, 2010 (cnet). Look at the comments on this one—in particular, there is a link to a forums discussion with a supposed program that fixes the problem. The particular discussion chain of interest is here.
- XP SP3 Problems on AMD-HP PCs (Technibble.Com)
- XP Service Pack 3 Kills AMD Machines (Toms Hardware)
Given these problems, my inclination is not to attempt to do the SP3 update myself (I hate SP updates, and I’m not sure how to recover if they go back), but to call in someone who has likely done tons of them, and thus knows how to deal with the problem. In particular, since I got these computers many years ago at Best Buy, I was thinking of using their Geek Squad service. Does anyone have opinions on this service (or have a recommendation on someone out in the San Fernando Valley to use)?
