XP Service Pack 2 to 3 upgrade

Question

Hi, I have a Dell Dimension 5150 which is now about 6 years old. It came with Service Pack 2 and in order to acquire a few new pieces of technology like a smartphone I have been told that I need to upgrade to Service Pack 3 for it to work properly. I remember all of the fuss about people having problems with SP1 upgrading to SP2 so on a hunch I thought I would see if there was the same kind of thing with SP2 to SP3 and I have noticed by searching this forum there are some people who do seem to have problems upgrading. I was wondering if someone could please tell me if my computer will upgrade to SP3 without any issues. Or what might cause issues while trying to upgrade. I have a couple of external hard drives so I can move the majority of the contents off my computer if that is likely to cause a problem. In fact, now I think about it, I use one of the external hard drives to store all of the big things like my iTunes folder anyway so there isn't really that much taxing the computer. The only thing I have upgraded on my computer over the years is the RAM from 1GB to 3GB. And before anyone asks, the RAM was bought from Dell, I even spoke to them directly to find out which one would work best. So it's not like I bought one from a dodgy site. I would really appreciate any help you can provide, as I am/was kind of hoping not to replace this computer until the end of next year as it still works, for now at least. Thanks, Chris.

Tom Green · Accepted Answer

I have a E510 which is the same computer. I had no problems with Winxp sp3, it went smooth. Hope this helps. Tom

Alexandra_P · Accepted Answer

SP3 behaves much better than the previous service packs did, but nobody can guarantee it 100%. If you do run into trouble, odds are very high someone's run into it before and can help.

A couple things that will help the odds a bit:

1) Use the downloadable stand-alone update package instead of Windows Update. Don't worry about it saying "only for network" - it still works fine for one PC (and MS's own articles recommend it if Windows Update acts up).

www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx

2) Make sure any background software is turned off before you install it - real-time antivirus software, any monitoring or update programs (like Dell Support Center or the like), things like instant messaging, etc.

Long-time member Joe53 compiled a nice list of guides from MS and elsewhere (hopefully the links still work - haven't checked them all):

en.community.dell.com/.../19013803.aspx

Something to be aware of - if you're using this PC on the internet, likely you haven't had any security or other updates at all for a long time (MS stopped supporting SP2 over a year ago). Hopefully you haven't had any security issues, but after installing SP3, you will likely have a TON of updates left to do.

jackshack · Accepted Answer

Just a comment or two that might be useful: First, be patient. I installed Service Pack 3 onto three computers, two that were already up and running, one that needed a fresh installation of Windows XP. The two computers that were already running Windows XP SP-2 required nearly two hours for the installation using the downloaded version of the update package for Network Managers. I suspect that this was because I was running Norton Anti-Virus which insists on inspecting every file before it is extracted and installed. I had disabled the auto-protect prior to beginning execution, but I didn't set it for a long enough period. By the time the installation finally completed I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong.

The computer that required a fresh installation was just about an hour as I was able to apply the Service Pack 3 update to a new installation of Windows XP SP-2 and had no anti-virus installed at that point.

chrisash2 · Answer

Thanks for your response. I'll have a go this weekend. If I come back into the forum screaming for help then it probably didn't work!

chrisash2 · Answer

Thank you very much for your response. The issue of updates post SP3 had not occured to me. Thankfully I haven't had any security issues, but I agree, I'm probably in for one hell of a long session downloading updates. I think I'll leave this whole thing until the weekend. Thanks again.

chrisash2 · Answer

Thanks, I'm setting aside as much of the weekend as my computer needs so hopefully it will all go well, it'll just take a while.

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