[PCWorld]

Post your comments for FAQ: Windows XP SP3 Reboot Hell (and How to Get out of It) here

[Dennisb1]

But make sure you shut of Windows Automatic Update or the big Redmond server in the sky will keep trying to move you to SP3 at the appointed hour.

[rbh1]

Mine is one of those dual AMD HP pcs and experienced the continuous reboot problem. The computer would not enter Safe Mode and would not restore to an earlier date, saying the registry file was damaged. I keep seeing references to "insert your Windows XP system CD", but no one I know of (HP or Gateway or Toshiba) supplies one so I have never had one. I finally had to restore the computer to the original factory setup, losing all the installed programs in the process, plus all the updates. I'll stay with SP2.

[RNR19952]

What should upset people is that they all know there is a problem, but no one seems to be addressing it. I guess M$ is looking for the next company to ruin, and HP just acquired one...too busy for their old customers, while they are looking for new ones!

[Captain555]

I'm not sure why they don't know what the problem is. I read last week (can't remember where) that the problem was due to GDI32.DLL not getting upgraded correctly. I did about 30 upgrades so far, only one gave me the problem. Running on a AMD Athlon 3000 on a ECS mobo.

So I followed the instructions I read last week, which was to boot with the CD and go into recovery console. I deleted the file GDI32.DLL from WindowsSystem32. The instructions said to copy GDI32.DLL from WindowsServicePackFilesi386 back into WindowsSystem32, but that didn't work, gave me "access denied". So I decided to try to reboot and the PC rebooted OK.

I guess when it reloaded, it forced Windows to recover the files from somewhere.

[Markj51]

I downloaded sp3 and it works great i have windows xp on my computer.