XP Service Pack 3 Kills AMD Machines

[LunchBox]

taken from tom's hardware :

The problem relates to machines with SP3 installed rebooting and then not allowing users to get so much as Safe Mode. The problem is mainly affecting AMD users who bought their machines from HP. Johansson attributes the problem to the way that HP puts images of Windows onto its machines, using the same copy for both Intel and AMD boxes.

the rest of the article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Windows-XP-SP3,5334.html

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

The title is wrong, it doesnt kills amd machines, it kills hp machine that have a weird amd image. I installed sp3 on my parents pc (old barton 3200+) and it works fine though I dont get the idea there is any advantage on the perfomance side over sp2 though I havnt really tested.

 

[Bludd]

Yeah, it kills AMD machines with the wrong "CPU" device driver.

I wonder if it kills Intel machines with the AMD driver ...

 

[Neb]

Got 2 systems both with Opterons, both with latest AMD CPU driver and both with AMD Optimizer, 0 errors problems or anything else. If anything both systems are noticable more responsive than before aswel las faster with better disk I/O perfomance.

 

[Kurt]

Updated my parents' HP (Compaq NX9325 I think) laptop no problem. CPU is a Sempron 3500+

edit: NX6325 actually.

 

[pcchen]

Yeah, it kills AMD machines with the wrong "CPU" device driver.

I wonder if it kills Intel machines with the AMD driver ...

Well, apparently it doesn't. The problem of the HP image is, regardless of the CPU, it always have drivers for both CPU. Installing SP3 will cause machines with AMD CPU and both drivers to reboot endlessly. However, machines with Intel CPU and both drivers do not have this problem.

Of course, this is still a HP specific problem, not AMD nor Intel. Maybe a little with Microsoft.

 

[Bludd]

Thanks, pcchen. Interesting.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I happend to be at someknow living in my neighbordhood because they screwed up their pc and I though well lets just install sp3 but it killed windows. Wouldnt boot anymore only in safe mode. Interresting enough this was a Compaq (not a HP compaq yet) and a a64 3400+.

 

[suryad]

Whoa I think this might be what happened with my brothers computer recently. He has a dual core Opteron setup running XP SP2 32 bit. I think he may have attempted to install SP3. All his sytem would do is boot in safe mode only. And to make matter worse he has RAID 0 setup. His stuff was all backed up but he wanted to try the XP recovery/repair mode to see if that would fix his machine. Long story short because of the RAID setup he needed to have the XP cd slipstreamed with the RAID drivers and then it all started to work fine after that. Odd thing is though that his XP cd was showing him that he only had 235 mb of FAT space left...he just rebooted after he saw that because it kinda freaked him out thinking he lost his RAID but his machine then just started to boot normally....odd aint it?

 

[AcceleratorX]

I installed SP3 recently. I had no problems at all, except for the fact that it seemed to modify some of my HD audio chip's driver settings. My PC uses an AMD X2 5600+, and I have an OEM version of Windows XP.

So yeah, SP3 doesn't "kill" AMD machines, it only "kills" AMD machines with the Intel device driver loaded and running.

 

[Davros]

stylexp doesnt work with sp3

 

[AcceleratorX]

stylexp doesnt work with sp3

I guess a few DLL files updated with SP3 would need a fresh modification algorithm, thats why StyleXP doesn't work. You will need an updated version of the software.

 

[Frank]

So, I still have no reason to turn automatic updates on, I take it?

 

[Davros]

no, not really