Jazz,
I have to agree with you that M$ have done a decent job (from my experience) with SP3.
I will not download ANYTHING that only 'Runs' and installs on line, and cannot be saved and run at my leisure.
As the M$ update site for SP3 only performed a download and Run operation, I looked elsewhere for it.
This third party site had the SP3 download and so I got it and saved to Desktop.
http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows/windows-xp-service-pack-3.htmlI know it is a big download because M$ cannot scan your computer and only download the relevant bits, so you get the lot. Which is good if you want to load on more than one computer because you have the full SP3.
I set both my machines to download at almost the same time and the XP Pro was showing estimated time as 10 minutes. The XP Home showed 1 hour 22 minutes so I stopped the download.
When I had it on the desktop of the Pro machine I burned it to CD which took another 8 minutes.
I then clicked to install on the Pro machine and that took another 12/15 minutes.
Ran it for a day and a half with what I thought was no after effects so I used the disk and installed onto the second PC.
Everything went fine again.
Just discovered one small flaw. . . the thumbnails in My Pictures had all lost their names, the ballon showed the names when I scrolled over them but no name box under the thumbnail.
If that has happened to anyone else, here is the quick cure.
Open My Documents and then hold down the Shift Key and double click on the My Pictures Folder.
dave