My 5 yrs old Dell laptop will never be fast but at least I'll do what I can to make it less slow.

15 mins. ago I started a clean install of XP Pro. Right now 83 % of the partition is formatted...

Please stay connected so that I can get help when everything f*cks up :P

Are you going to be pulling SP3 straight down this time? That saves a remarkable amount of time, but I've had a few issues where the machine flags up new updates afterwards, fails to install them, but then detects the same ones again every time.

whatever you do dont install SP3 straight away without first visiting the windows update site and downloading at least one other update. If you go straight to sp3 then windows update will stop working and you will have the same problem as interphase.

The problem interphase has is a known bug with windows update, and the fix is available on the ms website but is quiet complicated for the non technical user.

Updates are not installed successfully from Windows Update, from Microsoft Update, or by using Automatic Updates after you perform a new Windows XP installation or you repair a Windows XP installation

Edited 18 October, 200817 yr by mannyo

Ahh buggrit, hadn't spotted that one as I'd only applied SP3 for the first time on a work laptop that had to be back sharpish. It's surprising that happens even when the first thing it does is to patch windows update to the latest version before proceeding - bit of a gaffe, that.

Cheers for the pointer, I'll note that down and sort it when the laptop comes back

:eek:

Thanks for the warning, problem is that I logged out before reading them in order to connect my old laptop and make necessary updates :P

I made a clean install of XP SP1 from my OEM CD, then immediately installed SP3 from an ISO CD made beforehand...

Afterwards I visited the Windows Update website and downloaded/installed 22 updates. It ran OK :confused: Well, I have better make another visit to see what happens...

EDIT: revisited the Update website and everything seems to work OK. One new update found (security updeate for IE7) which is as it should be since upgrading to IE7 was among the 22 updates that I first downloaded.

I never use the automatic update so if that fails I don't care.

I also installed OpenOffice 3 - now I can open .docx files (Office2007) without a detour to the MS world so I think I'll skip MSOffice altogether.

Edited 18 October, 200817 yr by swedishskoda