It may be news to you, but backing up is standard procedure prior to
upgrading an operating system, and Microsoft has been advising this for
years.

---
Leonard Grey
Errare humanum est

Rich/rerat wrote:
> *** This message has been REPOSTED not CROSS-POSTED in Both MS Newsgroups
> and the Dell related Newsgroup ***
> Sorry about that, but I use two (2) different News Servers.
>
> To anyone interested,
> Before you do a SP3 upgrade, I can't stress enough, that you should purchase
> a backup or imaging program like Acronis TrueImage, (version 10 or higher
> should be your choice.) Make a backup/image of your current OS, so if you
> have problems, you can easily return to a working copy of your OS. Saves
> allot of grey hair, and headaches.
>
> If you have the following Dell PC (or other similar models) with an AMD
> Processor, and using the image that was installed by the factory, you may
> have run into the reboot problem that occurred after installing XP SP3
> update:
>
> (My Configuration)
> Dell Dimension E521
> AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2 Ghz
> 3 GB of RAM
> 80 GB Primary HDD
> 500 GB Secondary HDD
> Windows XP MCE 2005
> Using the restore image from the factory/hidden partition.
> MS LifeCam VX-6000
> Windows Live Messenger (current version)
>
> There is a fixed mentioned on the net to change a registry setting in XP,
> before trying to install XP SP3. This did not work for me. After making a
> backup of the keys listed below, I deleted/removed the following registry
> Keys:
>
> 1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\i ntelppm
> 2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Services\i ntelppm
> Or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet00X\Services\i ntelppm (Random
> ControlSet #)
>
> These keys will have a reference of:
> "DisplayName: Intel Processor driver"
> Dword: Start
> Value: 4 (Hex) (This value did not work for me.)
>
> I did not have to remove the following keys, because it referred to an event
> log. The upgrade worked, and I left the keys there in the registry.
>
> 3.
> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Eventlog\System\intelppm
> 4. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Services\E ventlog\System\intelppm
>
> After the upgrade, things may still be a little sluggish still, I found that
> I had to remove, then reinstall, or upgrade several IM programs, digital/web
> cameras and their drivers/programs, some Dell Hardware drivers, etc... I
> also upgraded from MS Media Player 10 to 11. Do these changes after the SP3
> update not before. Also do another Microsoft/Windows Update check.
>