I installed sp3 last night every thing went fine after rebooting my system is slow,half my icons are messed up,when i go to my computer it takes aprox two min two find my drives, Thanks

100% failure rate on install on new freshly install xp sp2 machines.
 
So far i have not been able to get it installed.........

I have tried 3 times now.  First time was by going to the Windows Update site and the other two through auto-update.  Each time it gets near the end and then a message box pops up saying "Access Denied".  It then uninstalls itself, says my computer may be unusable now, but works fine after I reboot.
 
I have run all the system utilities I can think of to clean up, throughly test, and defrag the HD.  I ran RegSupreme Pro to clean up the registry.  I will try again and then just turn off auto-updates if it fails again.

Also in device manager i have no icons! I went back two sp2 with no change, tried to restore  system but system restore cant restore to any date, I dont know what to do next but to reinstall xp anyone have any idea's

Do xp repair, you get to keep your data and programs. Boot off xp disk, do not take the first offer to go to a repair console. Do setup xp. then do what it says like accept the license etc., soon you get a screen showing where your installation currently resides (presumably c:\windows). At that time press the key that the screen says for a repair (r maybe???). From there it looks like you are doing a fresh install, except you don't format or anything like that.  
 
I'm going by memory, so if this does not make sense, reply and I'll do it tonight and clear things up, or perhaps someone can fill in what I missed.
 
I have a 100% success rate of preserving data doing this, and a 75% rate of solving xp problems.  
 
Much simpler, but less effective is to open a cmd window and type "sfc /scannow"
 
Here's some good bedtime reading and you might even get luck (keep this clean guys) and find an sp3 version if you search MS site:  
 
http://support.microsoft.com/defau [...] ndowsxpsp2
 
Edit: you might end up doing a reinstall, but the repair only takes an hour, mostly unattended. So it's worth a try. Also, you keep drivers, net setup, accounts and all the little things that make reinstall a nightmare for many.
 
Edit2: On behalf of Tater Salad, my avitar and best friend, DIE FLEAS DIE!!!
 
Cherio

http://support.microsoft.com/defau [...] ndowsxpsp2
 
and if you wish to install it again:
 
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950717/en-us
 
Credit: I pinched these links from http://www.dozleng.com/updates/ind [...] opic=18180        

Looks like SP3 is causing major trouble in the XP community:
 

• XP SP3 cripples some PCs with endless reboots
• Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 support until April 14
• SP3 Problems (interesting forum bit

I'm not sure if this is related, but I have also noticed that svchost.exe (linked with Windows Update) will eat up 99% processor power trying to download whatever update is out there.... this has been consistent for a few days on numerous PCs in my network.

---------------
Kevin Parrish
Contributing Editor / Official Chicken Clucker Tester
Tom's Games

I am going to hold off on installing it.  SP2 works just fine for me.  If no performance improvements are involved then it isn't worth installing on my home computer.

Wow i didnt think it was that bad!  http://www.tomshardware.com/news/W [...] ,5334.html

Knudsen, Thanks for the info http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950717/en-us  i think it was the tool kit/remote desktop, I could not save system and tried to reinstall fresh with sp3 for the most part it worked but am getting lock ups now and then saying norton caused one and one with no reason. With sp2 system was running fine going to go back to sp2

I've installed SP3 three times, on thrre differnt PC's (All intel, P4 3.2ghz Prescott, E6600  and E6550) in the last 3 days.   No problems whatsoever, in fact, all three are running better and faster.

 
See this M$ KB article:  Error message when you try to install Windows XP Service Pack 3: "Access is denied" or “Service Pack installation did not complete”

What's wrong with SP3?  I just recently had to reinstall windows xp (since the partition had spyware) and I updated all the way to sp3.  My computing experience has never been better.

 
Thanks!!      
 
I am still waiting for auto-update to let me know SP3 is available so I can try again.

 
Could someone please explain to me why SP3 is so bad?  I installed it on my pc and everything is running perfectly.

same at work we have 4 laptops with SP3 working perfectly and my desktop at home works perfectly...
 
but the experience was bound to be bumpy for some people, things like this are to be expected.