Facts to be taken a note of before installing Windows XP SP3

Wednesday, December 3, 2008, 8:53
Technology
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As said by Microsoft, there had been some compatibility bug in the point-of-sale retail software of Windows XP SP3 as its review, and also the latest version of Windows Vista. This is probably the reason behind the delay of the release date of Windows XP SP3. As per the message posted in the support forum for Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management Systems, the bug included data loss and corruption when the software was tried to run in Vista SP1. The RMS was affected by this same bug when it was installed on a system running SP3.

There are certain technical points that should be taken care of before installing Windows XP SP3. If you have IE7, it is advisable to uninstall it before upgrading to XP SP3 as Windows XP SP3 has the ability to downgrade from IE7 to IE6. Once the updation is complete, you can then install IE7, or restore IE6 if required.

There has been not much addition in the features of Windows XP SP3, but some modifications to product activation has been introduced. All the new installations of Windows XP SP3 will be offered the same 30 days grace period as offered to Vista users before they are asked to enter a product activation key. However, this change is limited to new installations only and is not effective if you upgrade from SP2 or an earlier version of XP. No product key would be asked if you are just updating. This service pack of Windows XP has a long list of fixes including 1,174 individual patches and hotfixes and the list is up-to-date.

In normal cases Microsoft refers its users those who uses XP as part of a new computer to the computer manufacturer or reseller for any problems or in cases charges $59 to answer per support request. But with Windows XP SP3, it is somewhat different. Microsoft will be providing free supports for any installation of XP SP3 or if there’s any compatibility problem. Users can even avail free support by telephone, e-mail or real time chat. Regarding the support you can consult XP SP3-specific page on Microsoft’s Help and Support site. The most important thing to be taken a note of by all the users is that Windows XP SP3 shall not be available at retail, it would be only available to OEMs as an option for some of its product and for Volume License customers. So as a matter of fact you will have to make the updation to SP3 on newly purchased and installed copy of Windows XP.