More XP SP3 Problems Surface

By Greg McNevin

May 12, 2008: It seems Microsoft’s update woes are continuing, with reports that Windows XP Service Pack 3 is causing significant headaches for many users after being installed via Microsoft’s Automatic Update Service.

The update has reportedly sent many PCs into an endless reboot sequence, cycling between the startup and shutdown screens. It is not currently known how many users this bug seems to be affecting, however, judging by the feedback on Microsoft’s XP message board the number is not small.

Users reported that despite trying several installation configurations, the problem keeps occurring, forcing them to roll back the installation with System Restore and remove SP3 altogether. Further reports suggest that the issue crops up on systems with AMD processors. IDM has installed the update on one AMD machine so far and no problems have cropped up.

Microsoft has been struggling on the update front of late, with both Vista SP1 and XP SP3 experiencing delays and prominent bugs such as last week’s Dynamics muck up – which affected both OS updates.

So far Microsoft has blocked Dynamics users from receiving either service pack through automatic update while it works on a fix for the issue.

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