So what we see here is the fact that neither Microsoft's nor HP's labs pinpointed this issue ahead of time...? I thought MS ran a big fat regression testing suite solely for the purposes of flagging issues like this. Did they not have any HP computers?

Also quite odd that the Intel driver (possible the AMD one too) doesn't seem to have a `if [processor_id=="genuineintel"]; then {load_module}; else {dont_load_module}; fi` bit in it.

Professor at a local University wrote hundreds of his colleagues not to upgrade to XPSP3, saying he had this issue. Rather embarrassing since a few people wrote back with the fix within minutes and started an e-mail war.

Is it just me or has HP's reputation showing quite a decline recently? I have seen it go so far as to people requesting laptop information for a future purchase, noting to exclude all HP models in the post.

Nice to know I was not the only one. My HP Pavilion was in an endless reboot loop after SP3. Fortunately, restore worked flawlessly and all was back to normal after 30 minutes or so.

I can not say too much about HP's latest stuff, but my 2 year old HP pavilion desktop was competitively priced and as far as the hardware is concerned it has been trouble free. I also have had good luck with HP printers. My last Epson lasted 6 months, before becoming a door stop, while I have yet to have a HP printer die on me.

I do agree with Uber about HP's software. It is dumbed down, has way too may pictures of "happy" HP customers as background wall paper and really seems to slow the system down.

<AMD_Chip> Hi, I'm AMD. I only work with AMD drivers.

<Intel_Driver> Hi, I'm Intel. I only work with Intel chips

<H.P.> ....meh, whatever. *images away*

<XP_SP3> LAWL, this'll be fun!

I havn't had any problems with SP3...

I honestly can't tell any difference other than Doom 3 and a couple other of my older games run a little bit faster now ;p

psch - i bet this was someone's money-saving project.

"we'll just use one image rather than two! it'll save millions!"

That's a 3 line patch. I could write it if I did windose.

Abstractly:

Suss machine ... should return machine name string
If HP AMD move intel driver to \
If not exit.

A reasonable Linux distro would have it out the following morning.

(from Myth)

"Casualty"...
"Casualty"...
"Casualties"