Personally, I had trouble after slipstreaming it onto a MCE 2005 install disc; blue screen with SESSION3_INITIALIZATION_FAILURE message. The system later installed Vista SP1 without a hitch!

here's my experience on a BRAND NEW dell Vostro 1700 laptop right out of the box:

I plug it in, boot it up, go through the initial setup and EULA agreement. Connect to my LAN, go to windows update and the first update that pops up is SP3. it installs fine, reboots fine, but then when I try to update IE6 to IE7 the process fails, and all of the other updates that microsoft update detects (Office XP SP3) and such fail as well.

Big trouble now, SP-3 worked fine on my lowly GX1 and a old VIA 939 board both single core and IDE HDs, so I figure its safe to try on my gammer-FX-60,Raid 0+1,SLI-8800s, WRONG it killed it! it stayed in a re-boot loop ending in a unreadable blue screen. Now Im haveing to start from scratch and rebuild it from the BIOS up! So I guess its hit or miss for SP-3 or maybe it just doesnt like RAID setups?

I had a major problem with SP3, all downloads are corrupt. This is with the 680i chipset. I would like to know if anybody else has problems with this chip set. And when i say downloads, i'm talking about newsgroups.

SP3 "borked" TWO out of THREE computers that I tried to update. On one it destroyed the bio info system file which I was able to find and fix in DOS (it changed the extension but didn't create a new one). The other computer had to be forced into safe mode and do a system restore after going through an endless boot and reboot about halfway through the normal boot process. So now it's back to SP2 until MS works out the INSTALL problems.

SP3 seems OK, the install program is a DISASTER.

#18,
You can slipstream SP3 over XP RTM/SP0, but you need SP1a or better to install SP3 on a already formated machine.

Just installed. I see no difference. I was afraid I was going to be magically upgraded to IE7 but was pleasantly surprised that I stil have IE6 after install.

With Service Packs, rather than relying on Windows Update I always download the stand-alone version
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5B33B5A8-5...
Makes a lot of things easier and (IME) more reliable. (Burned onto a CD it's also handy if you have relatives with slow internet connections, etc)

Note the link in today's shortbread
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/05/05/ie-and-xpsp3.aspx
If you have IE7 installed and you install SP3, you lose the ability to uninstall IE7 and go back to IE6 (unless you uninstall SP3, then IE7, then reinstall SP3).

If you have the IE8 beta installed, uninstall it before installing SP3.

The version linked to by Ars Technica last week matches the md5sum of this one. So, no hidden changes.

Installed it on a older system and it went smooth.

Just finished 2 of 6 computers last night and SP-3 needs two pre-downloads before trying to install, They are in the optional software section . It took first time after reading instructions,but failed over and over with out them!

Is this pack as simple to integrate as SP2? Or do you have to prepare SP2 disc and then upgrade it to SP3? I really want to get rid of the Vista on my main PC...

Downloaded. Installed. No issues.

I did an install on a Laptop and when it rebooted I got a GDI32.DLL error and Windows XP would not boot for anything. I just keep getting the blue screen warning of the GDI32.DLL error. I had to reinstall SP2 with the repair option, then reinstall SP3 again.

I then got the "Corrupt and missing HAL.DLL" message and again Windows would not do anything. The repair option didn't even work this time. I installed SP2 in a seperate directory, moved the Boot.ini and "new" Hal.dll over to the original Windows directory, and restarted. Thank God that worked.

3rd times a charm? I installed SP3 again and finally this time it worked. My Windows update was messed up (it wouldn't install any updates at all). I had to run some CMDs to get it working again. I think with the multi installs/repairs, my computer runs slower than it did w/ SP2 hehe. And yes this is the final release of SP3, never had the betas or RC's installed.

I hope no one else had the problem, it was a nightmare! I thought all my work on my work laptop was lost. (Notes here why backups are important, doh :) ).

installed and working. Nothing else to report.

Installed it on my virtual XP install, it was about 60mb or so on a fresh install of sp2. Apparently other people didn't have it because I told my friend that it was out, and he didn't have it on his WU.