Small Business Internet Guide-SBOguide

UPDATE - Microsoft has re-released Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. You can read all about the release on Microsoft's website.. Gven Microsoft's history with this Service Packs, be prudent and backup your system before allowing the patch to be installed. Also, unless you are specificallly effected by this Serivce Pack, just say no to the upgrade at this time. As warned in a previous article, some users are reporting problems with Microsoft's latest upgrade made available for Windows XP. InfoWorld, a publication for computer industry professionals has noted that many users are reporting problems that render their systems unusable.

One of the problems, repeated reboots, appears to only effect systems that contain AMD microprocessors that have been produced by Hewlett-Packard. The problems are related to a driver that HP installs on their computers. See the full article here.

In another news item, it has been reported that the SP3 installation causes registry corruption on certain machines running Symantec products. Reportedly Microsoft and Symantec are pointing fingers regarding who's to blame.

The point of this article is not to blame anyone for the problems, but to warn small business owners running Windows XP to delay upgrading to Serivce Pack 3 for the time being. As I've stated previously, procrastination is usually a good policy when it comes to operating system upgrades. Let others find the problems, then you can decide when it makes business sense for you to follow. If you must upgrade, be sure to back up your system thoroughly before proceeding. Use a program like Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image to make a boot image before diving in.

Microsoft's help and support page can be found here. Please familiarize yourself with this resource before starting the upgrade. If you review the support page and believe that you don't need any of the new features, many of which were designed to support large IT organizations, feel free to skip this upgrade. A word of warning however, make sure you keep Service Pack 2 correctly updated with security and bug patches.