User reports began to spread on the Internet who encountered a blank device manager and network connections after upgrading their Windows XP system to Service Pack 3. The problem was largely attributed to software that was monitoring the Registry for changes, many Symantec customers had problems with a feature called SymProtect that would cause the [...]
Symantec Registry Fix for Windows XP Service Pack 3
Users with a recent Symantec product faced several problems after updating their computer from Windows XP Service Pack 2 to the latest version, among them removed network connections, an empty device manager, unusable wireless connections and thousands of bogus Registry entries. This was apparently caused by the toolsymprotect, a part of many Symantec applications, that [...]
Symantec: Disable SymProtect before upgrading to Windows XP SP3
If you are running the Symantec products Norton Internet Security 2008, Norton SystemWorks 2008, Norton 360 or Norton AntiVirus 2008 on a machine with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and want to upgrade to Service Pack 3 you should disable the SymProtect feature before doing so or your operating system could go kaboom. More precisely [...]
Fix for Restart Bug after installing Windows XP SP3
Users with AMD processors that have been trying to install Windows XP Service Pack 3 might be greeted with a bluescreen error message after rebooting their computer that begins with STOP: 0×0000007E (0xC0000005 and contains the error text SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED. The computer restarts and the bluescreen error is displayed again. This is an endless cycle but [...]
Steps to take before you install Windows XP Service Pack 3
Microsoft released a Knowledge Base article detailing the steps that users should take before installing the latest Service Pack for Windows XP. The article itself is divided into two parts with the first part detailing the steps to take before installing Service Pack 3 while the second part lists possible error messages and problems users [...]
Standalone Windows XP SP3 Download List
The Service Pack 3 for Windows XP has finally be added again to Windows Update and the Microsoft website and every user has the opportunity to download and install it. I never liked Windows Update and prefer to download the patches, which includes the Service Pack 3, as a direct download so that I can [...]
- Author: Daniel Pataki
- Published: May 7th, 2008
- Comments: 6
XP SP3 and Vista SP 1 available through Windows Update
I awoke to find that the new service packs for Windows XP and Vista are available through Windows Update Center. This will make installation much easier, although for XP users there’s less in it than there is for Vista people who could experience a significant speed boost.
The XP SP3 brings a lot to the table [...]

