I've got it on quite a few machines (over 10) no problems. Some are Intel and some are AMD.

I've heard some people have issues with SP3 and AMD chips though.

So backup everything of course before installing, but should be OK.

My new main edit PC would not boot after installing SP3. It'd hang forever on the WIndoz progress bar. Booted into Safe Mode and Uninstalled it and after a couple of reboots it seems to be running OK.
Every other XP PC I've got has had SP3 installed without issue.
I believe I may have been quite lucky in that I could uninstall it. You really should have an escape route to get back the system without relying on XP at all.

Bob.

That piece of junk absolutely crippled my editing machine and I spent days trying to get it to just boot ....it would freeze forever while loading XP, and it wiped out any 'system restore' dates. Maybe 15 times hitting the on/off button I could get it to load XP and I would try to set a 'restore date' then shut down, only to have it hang again for another dozen tries. I finally got it uninstalled and to hell with it....

On my Home Edition XP email machine I'm caught in pergatory with a screwed up mess. When I uninstalled SP3 something remained because I get nothing but cancelled SP3 reinstalls since. It goes through about 20 minutes of trying then I get an error code and another 20 minutes trying to get back to where it started.

The Update icon sits waiting in my taskbar....but I'm tired of wasting time going in circles and at least this machine still sort of functions....

Don't walk--RUN--to the store to get an image backup program of some sort. I use Acronis. Do an image backup to a separate hard drive ASAP. Now, if anything goes haywire on your system, you can do a restore and be back in business in an hour or less.

I'm the tinkering type and have lost track of the times I've accidentally totally screwed up my system. Something won't uninstall, I get a BSOD on boot, a program will no longer work--I don't worry, I just drag out the image and in a matter of minutes I've turned the
time machine back to a happier time.

Riredale,
I am embarrassed to admit I have Acronis but haven't used it...
If you can't get your computer to load/boot XP how would I be able to get the back up image to work?
Clueless....
Eileen

I agree - get an image program so that you can restore Drive C. After using several commercial packages with sometimes unreliable restores, I created a free BartPE boot disk with DriveImageXML installed on it (along with other free programs). I now never uninstall anything - I simply restore my Drive C to its previous state. I've never had a flaw result from my restoration. Use Google to get the free programs and instructions.

"If you can't get your computer to load/boot XP how would I be able to get the back up image to work?"

Trueimage has a function to create a boot CD.
You restart the PC with the BIOS set to Boot From CD.
That loads enough code to restore the disk image.

Bob.

And you can put your backup disk images on an external USB drive. The Acronis TrueImage bootable CD program will find your external HD and you can select the image.

Be CERTAIN when you back up your disk that you selet the Diskn (root) item in the partition tree!

When restoring, restore all partitions, and say yes to deleting any info on the destination (C drive) disk.

Make DAMN SURE your bootable CD will actually boot BEFORE you get into trouble! Make it then immediately boot it using the BIOS boot source selector to CD.

Make TWO bootable CDs. Put one somewhere like your safe deposit box. Without that CD you're screwed.

Keep the last backup you made while making the next, so when you finish a backup you have the new one and the one before that. Delete the oldest only after you do your backup, so you have the last TWO on your backup disk.

Needless to say, don't put your backup disk image files on the same drive as your OS (i.e. NOT on your C drive!!)

good advice from bob denny - make your new image BEFORE deleting your old one!!!!

leslie