I’ve installed SP3 on 3 different machines over the past three days… and what a mess! Here’s what I’ve seen so far:
NOTE: 1 of the 3 PCs below had the SP3 installed from the full 123MB download, the others used Windows Update.
1) Fujitsu Lifebook notebook: fresh install of Win2K, then SP3 installed. Office 2000 SR1 installed, SP2 added next. User installed one simple program (heat exchange software) which barely touched the registry. Used with no problems for three days, then came into office, booted up, got as far as starting to show the login screen and the PC rebooted. Did this in Safe Mode, and last known good config was useless. Had to do a repair installation of 2K, and backed SP3 off. Works fine now… back to SP2.
2) Compaq Armada E500 notebook: my own machine, installed with Compaq’s own preinstall, no service packs. I’ve applied SP2 + all hotfixes up to this point. Hundreds of programs installed, network sniffers, auditing software, Timbuktu Pro, Palm, Office 2K Pro, Visio, etc… never had a lick of problems with this machine. No new software installed for three or four weeks now. Installed SP3, and almost immediately Windows wouldn’t do a full shutdown. Forced it one day, booted fine the next. Forced it again the next day, then it stopped working. Turns out my profile was crashing it. Booted into Administrator account, started backing up data from my profile to an external drive. Did a defrag, and it kept locking up. Now it won’t boot into Admin account! Running Norton AV Corp 7.6, with 8/14/2002 defs auto-installed via LiveUpdate…
3) generic tower AMD PC: Install of Win2K with SP2, running fine for 6 months. Applied SP3, and within two days, same exact problem as #1 above!
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So, I’m totally off SP3. I’m interested in seeing how others are fairing with this service pack. Is it just my really bad luck, or is Microsoft going to have to pull this release?