As has been rumored for quite some time, the final service pack for the venerable Windows XP operating system has been released. Microsoft’s new flagship desktop operating system, Vista, received its first service pack early in February.
Automatic distribution of XP SP3 was expected to begin just two weeks ago, but a conflict was discovered between the new service pack and Microsoft’s Dynamics Retail Management System. In addition, the problem also affected Vista SP1 so Microsoft has created a filter which will prevent download of the new service packs to any system running Dynamics Retail Management System. SP3 is now available for download.
Some users are reporting improved application performance with the new service pack. One reviewer found an approximately 10% increase in execution speed among standard business applications. With that improvement, claims were made that XP runs nearly twice as fast as Vista.
Naturally, not all reports are rosy as is the case for virtually all service pack releases. Some users have found their systems not to run well, reboot irregularly or just plain not boot up at all after SP3 was installed. These situations are oftentimes due to out of date drivers which are not compatible with the new service pack code.
As a general rule, wait a few days after a service pack release to update your system. While not all potential kinks will be worked out in that time, it will, hopefully, give you the needed time to make sure that your backup is working prior to the update. If not, there’s always System Restore to rescue.
