To SP3 or to not SP3, that is the question

CraigMBecket · **2nd July 2008, 03:31 AM**

G'day

Will be returning home in a couple of weeks

, but only for a couple of weeks

, and will be giving my systems a once over.

Well to tell the truth I will be trying to find out why my son's re-build of the MCE with a new MOBO has fallen over, (some of you may remember my hunt for an identical mobo to the one that was in the machine), have I got two bum MOBOs or 2 bum HDDs.

No 1 son is very reluctant to touch it again in case it has something to do with what he did, even though I assured him no blame would be attached either way.

Will also be building a second MCE, so wife has a spare if one falls over, it will of course reside in the bedroom otherwise.

Anyway back to the point. I have been reading of people having problems with SP3, and have even been advising people not to touch based on these reports,but have also read of some who have had no problems or who cured the problems. So the question is do I avoid it like the plague during the build/re-build or do I say install it before the tuners go in or what?

Craig.

GlenR · **2nd July 2008, 07:47 AM**

Since I'm not using MCE2005 in a real sense anymore, I can't comment on SP3 from a MC viewpoint, but I do have SP3 on my workhorse XP Home PC (using it to post this) and it has been completely painless. No issues at all.

XavierDa · **2nd July 2008, 09:39 AM**

Hi there,

Like GlenR, I have SP3 installed on my work laptop and it works a charm - no real issue at all. The problem with MCE 2005, is that it does seem to break it.

I am currently trying to rebuild my machine with MCE 2005. After SP3 was installed, my Compro E700 card stopped working. I hadn't had a single problem with this card previously.

More and more resports on this forum don't really reveal a trend either way - some people have no issue with the upgrade,, whereas for others it brings a whole lot of pain!

My recent attack on the issue was to slipstream SP3 into a new install DVD using nLite and rebuild. It's interesting to note that SP3 does seem to clobber SOME files. For example, refer to the post here: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/...5838&SiteID=17

In nLite, when pointing to the SP2 source it states that the version of MCE is version 3.0. After pointing to SP3, this version DROPS to v2.8! I applied the fixes mentioned in the post and the install process went smoothly. Except, my Compro card still doesn't work

I am trying another build with the latest drivers, which I will get working with SP2 first, THEN I'll apply SP3 to try my luck. If that doesn't work, I'll just have to run with SP2...

Regards,

Xav.

Redwight · **2nd July 2008, 09:30 PM**

The only issue I've had so far is that the driver on my quattro-s fail after about four days continuos running and the PC needs a reboot. Before that and running different tuners I had to reboot about once a week as a result of the swap file exceeding the partitions limits. Seems to me to be a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation; maybe with a little experimentation it will work OK for you.

CraigMBecket · **3rd July 2008, 04:03 AM**

MMMMMMM!

Thanks gents, I too have SP3 on my laptop XP with no problems but it looks to me to be a case of avoid like the plague as far as MCE goes then.

Craig.

GlenR · **3rd July 2008, 07:47 AM**

You could always take an image of your MCE PC then throw on SP3 and see how it goes. If it's a problem, roll back.

XavierDa · **3rd July 2008, 10:43 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by CraigMBecket

MMMMMMM!

Thanks gents, I too have SP3 on my laptop XP with no problems but it looks to me to be a case of avoid like the plague as far as MCE goes then.

Craig.

An update on my progress. I managed to get my Compro E700 card playing nice again with SP3. To achieve this, I slipstreamed just the drivers into the original SP2 discs using nLite. I have to do this as I am installing onto a RAID setup. I then installed remaining drivers, such as the Compro ones and some motherboard related drivers, which couldn't be slipstreamed easily.

Then I went to Windows Update and installed about 96 updates! I installed the Rollup 2 for MCE and THEN finally installed SP3.

So far so good. My tuner picks up channels again and no complaints from MCE about corrupt entries etc.

My task now is to try and make the whole process faster with a smarter custom install disk.

Regards,

Xav.

Redwight · **14th July 2008, 08:37 PM**

I've also managed to sort out mine; although in this case the tuner socket got broken when I moved recently.

vlad · **15th July 2008, 12:01 AM**

I have actually upgraded to SP3 my MCE 2005, taking Acronis image before that.

No problems so far running 3 weeks. But no improvements as well

So, my suggestion - if you are running a box - don't upgrade, but if you are installing new one, then why not? To avoid countless updates.

jsbbs · **15th July 2008, 10:27 AM**

There's also an issue with the Hauppage tuners if you apply SP3...

Not to sound like a broken record, use your favourite backup software before applying SP3

.

MitchSchaf · **19th July 2008, 03:54 AM**

The SP3 issues are fixable, same with the Hauppage tuners. Here are a few options:

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