ESP Projects Ltd: IT Support - Sheffield

The Service Pack 3 (SP3) bundle of tweaks and updates for Windows XP is now available for download. The code has already been “released to manufacture’’, which means it is being distributed to PC makers for pre-installation on new machines.

The update will not be rolled out to ESP clients however until we have undertaken substantial testing at our offices. We strongly advise clients NOT to apply it manually.

Microsoft made no promises of improved performance with SP3 yet in some independent testing it appears to deliver a measurable performance boost to of around 10% compared with the same configuration running under Windows XP with Service Pack 2. Potentially then, it could be a "must have" update especially for those PC's with less RAM that have struggled with SP2.

However, early indications from testing here at ESP are not good. After updating to SP3, We encountered major problems with daily operations, although shut down speed was noticeably faster. Most worrying though was a memory leak in svchost.exe on boot up, that saw this service (suspected to be the Windows Update Service) consume most or all CPU time for extended periods.

This brought back unhappy memories of a problem that occurred in the second of half of 2007, where an automatic update effectively ground PCs to a near-halt. We fielded in excess of 100 calls about this issue and it was a particularly nasty thing to happen because it makes it almost impossible to run a Windows Update to download the fix! In the end we advised clients to download it directly from our own website.

Our Advice: for the time being, leave SP3 well alone!