Windows XP SP3 – time for an exorcism?

I am beginning to think that SP3 was Microsoft’s “killer” app for Windows XP so folks would get frustrated with XP and move to Vista … and at the same time, when they move to Vista, they wouldn’t have too high of expectations.

Looks to me like Microsoft has just proven that Apple definitely does it better! And Microsoft has no room to ever say a word about Linux, ever again!

Talk about a true dog of a Service Pack! Some folks may not be having problems, but some clients have been through h*ll this past week with their haunted XP SP3 systems after the September 2008 Windows Updates.

We had, obviously wrongly, thought we were out of the woods when we were able to get all the updates for the hardware and software in preparation for SP3 and then the SP3 update went very smoothly and worked well for about a month … until the September 2008 Windows Updates turned one client’s set of computers into possessed computers that would all of a sudden decide that their printers were no longer installed, or Outlook or Firefox or Quickbooks. Or just puke when Adobe Distiller tried to convert to PDF.

By last night they seemed to be working OK, but gawd knows what today will bring. I hope they are out of the woods, but there’s no way to be sure till they try to work with them today. I was beginning to think the computers needed an exorcist. And they still might. If so, I sure hope Microsoft made a safe reversal on SP3.

I can not believe they didn’t test these stupid updates better than this! We were so careful and waited at least a number of months before installing SP3 to make sure SP3 wasn’t creating problems after installation before we figured it was safe to install it.

I think like many, we just thought that once you finally were able to get the daggone thing installed Microsoft would do better than this on the updates. Knowing full well that many people depend on their computers for work!

I think this posting at blogcritics pretty much continues to sum up my feelings on it:

I’d like to extend a nice big F-U to Microsoft for releasing yet another product that’s screwing up my computer (pardon my French). Windows XP SP3 has been out for a few months and I haven’t heard about the world coming crashing down as a result, so I figured it might be safe to install. HA! I should have known the clowns in Redmond wouldn’t be able to get this right.

Well, Microsoft, you’ve managed to once again make people skiddish about installing security updates … Thanks for nothing Microsoft.