A variety of complaints about SP3 are being posted on the Web, with users complaining about system crashes, spontaneous reboots, and other issues. On the Windows XP forum at Microsoft .com, for instance, a poster named Doug W. said that, after installing SP3, he had to use system restore "after three attempts, with different configurations each time." He mentioned that his system has an Athlon chip from Advanced Micro Devices, and other users have reported similar problems with SP3 on AMD machines.

AMD-Based HP Machines

According to news reports, a Microsoft document lays the blame for the endless reboot problem after installing SP3 on some computer makers. The issue, the document said, is when the XP disc image is created on an Intel-based computer and then run on a non-Intel-based machine, such as an AMD one.

Jesper Johansson, who used to work for Microsoft, noted on his blog that Microsoft identified the same problem with Service Pack 2 for XP, and that the particular problem is unique to Hewlett-Packard AMD-based desktop machines.

He quoted the company as saying in an article written following the XP SP2 problem that it did not support using a computer with one kind of processor to run an operating system based on an image created on a computer with another kind of processor. The article described how to modify the Windows registry to correct the problem.

SP3 was released to broad distribution by Microsoft last Wednesday, and is available from Windows Update service or from the company's Download Center. It offers a variety of fixes and enhancements to XP, which Microsoft has said it will begin phasing out at the end of next month.

Could Be 'Pretty Significant'

It has also been reported that SP3 will not install on systems that run a beta of Internet Explorer 8 and, after successfully installing SP3, IE7 cannot be uninstalled to, say, use IE6 instead.

Laura DiDio, an analyst with industry research firm Yankee Group, said some of the bugs in SP3 "were usual," but others, such as the apparent issues with AMD-based HP machines, were the kind of "serious problems" with an update that haven't been heard about "in years."

She said observers should "give it another week or two" to see if people are still having substantial problems" and, if they are, "this could be pretty significant."

DiDio added that the reported "hundreds" of complaints will be seen by Microsoft as relatively few. But, she said, it could impact enterprise users, since continued reports of problems could provide more reason for IT departments to delay updating XP with SP3.