Topic: XP SP3

[DAwG]

o thnx, I forgot bout Micros***'s utility

[Farmchild]

A lot of people are reporting the looping BSOD death error when upgrading to SP3, and MSoft has pulled this off windows update once already because of it.  If you check the update notes, there's not really much in there, mostly just extra compatibility with vista/server 2008 machines on the network.  It also includes all the previous updates, but if you have your windows update turned on, you probably already have those.

Personally, I'm not upgrading to SP3 anytime soon, I've heard about way too many issues with it, and it doesn't really add anything I care about.

[mephisto_kur]

I am about to reload my machine.  I plan on getting it to SP2, then ghosting the drive, then loading SP3.  I want to see if SP3 is what dropped my 3dmark06 score 5000 points.

[DoctorDave]

I just did a complete reinstall after SP3 bricked my original install, and oddly enough, this one is working like a charm. I'll get around to running 3dMark06 and seeing what I can find.

[DAwG]

I noticed my score dropped 3000 points, then I double checked nTune and SLI was not enabled, and I turned off some stuff like AVG and it's gazillion agents for just about anything

[mephisto_kur]

I found my problem, and it was not SP3.  when I put my new cooler in, I did not seat my RAM correctly

[DoctorDave]

That's a relief, Meph.

Also, I noticed that SP3 axes any hacked uxtheme.dll you may have had running, so you'll need to get another one online to run custom themes again.

[Gad]

After I installed SP3 I noticed several performance issues.  I was getting a lot of lag in CS:S and I had never really had lag issues before.  It also seemed like I was having an overall slow down with all programs and start up.  I installed SP3 on my PC at work as well and it seems like the same performance decrease as well.   

I decided to format my home PC last Sunday because of this and I also wasn't that happy with the way I set up my last install of XP.  Everything went smooth until Windows was finalizing the setup and then I would get a BSOD.  I went into CMOS and it wasn't recognizing my HDD.  I switched the jumper to cable select and then I would have to go through Auto Detect for it to recognize my HDD.    

I did this twice and finally said to hell with it.  I backed up my storage partition on my external drive and used another smaller HDD to install my OS(I just don't have time to spend on crap like this POS).  Finally got everything back to normal *crosses fingers* for the most part.

The HDD I had my OS on previously still works as a slave and all of the data on the storage partition is still fine.  It must have corruption on the 0 sector.  It is a few years old but maybe a low level format will fix it.  I guess a new one is not all that much but being on a budget sucks

I don't know if SP3 caused all of these problems but I am not going to install it this time.

[anomaly]

when you reinstalled windows, did you choose the option "quick format"? if you did this may be why you ran into problems with your new install (not with SP3).

when ever i reinstall windows i use the normal format. it takes longer but gets rid of all the old crap (not really but windows doesn't see it any more). plus if im not mistaken (correct me if im wrong) windows will see any bad sectors on the partition during the format and mark them as unusable space so nothing get written in the bad sectors.

[Gad]

I never use "Quick Format" I always want it to go as deep as possible.

Not sure about the sectors question but I believe the 0 sector is where the boot information has to go.  From what I understand a low level format(actually more accurately called Reinitializing) will entirely wipe everything from the drive(data, partitions, even the sectors) overwriting everything with ones and zeros, basically eliminating everything from the drive.  I am not very knowledgeable about this so I could be entirely wrong.

[anomaly]

hmmm... i dont know then man.

i had a disk that was so messed up it would freeze the windows setup thingy while formatting. so i partitioned the first little bit off onto another partition and reinstalled windows on the "good" part. it still works to this day.

that might be a option till your budget finds room for a new HD.

[Gad]

I think am good for now.  The drive my OS is on right now is only 30gb so I would like to rely on the other drive(160gb, partitioned 50gb and 110gb) for programs and storage but if the sectors are corrupting it might not last long.

I might give reinitializing a try.  Never done it before so it should be and adventure.   [try=murphy's law] [/try]

[mephisto_kur]

chkdsk d: /R

[Gad]

chkdsk d: /R

Not sure what "/R" means/does.  I will give it a try though.

[mephisto_kur]

Locates bad sectors and marks them for non use.  Also fixes indexing errors and other software issues with the hard drive.

Type:

chkdsk /?


that will tell you what each modifier for chkdsk does.