W2KnewsFLASH: ~ Service Pack 3 for W2K! ~

But careful, it has not yet been officially announced, and the first problem reports are also already in. Some one just sent me an email with: "Downloaded and installed the final release of W2K SP3. After a clean install and a reboot I got the blue screen of death. Only after uninstalling a rare application from my desktop it worked OK."

W2K SP3 is at the moment we are writing this (Wednesday afternoon, July 31, 2002) not yet on the normal MS download site and not "acknowledged as existing for the wide world"
so far. However, it was released yesterday to the MS Premier Support Customers and these are now testing with it. We have installed on a few W2K systems and it seems to be functioning
correctly, but careful: TEST, TEST, TEST!. And always backup that system and make an Emergency Repair Disk. Also, always have enough disk space to allow a rollback in case of problems.

Here is an early article about W2K SP3 on C|net. http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=020731BL-CNET

MS said: "SP3 is a well-tested collection of updates that focuses on a variety of customer-reported concerns with the Windows 2000 family of operating systems. In many ways, SP3 is a traditional
service pack in that it includes enhancements to improve upon Windows 2000's reliability, compatibility and security. In addition, Microsoft is fulfilling its commitment to implement the changes
required by the consent decree signed with the [US Department of Justice] and nine settling states." (from the WinInformant Site)

There is more reason to be careful. The Installation of W2K Preliminary Hotfixes Causes a Conflict with SP3. The symptoms are that if you install a preliminary version of any of the W2K hotfixes that are listed in the "More Information" section of the MS website (link below) on a computer on which SP3 is
installed, or if you install SP3 on a computer on which these preliminary hotfixes are installed, you may experience either of the following symptoms: you lose some of the functionality of SP3 for Windows 2000 - or- you lose the functionality of the prelim hotfix. Check out this page: http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=020731BL-Prelim_Hotfixes

If you want to know how to find MS downloads, here is a search page: http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=020731BL-MS_Search

As usual, there is more than one version of this SP3, one is 124mb, but the Microsoft Developers Network version was 210MB. From what I hear.

Here is where the executable sat, but by the time you read this it may be gone already: http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=020731BL-W2KSP3

Here is where it should appear when it gets officially released. http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=020731BL-ServicePacks

And when you apply SP3 on a debug version of W2K that has been upgraded to W2K SP2, you may receive an error message. Here is the patch:
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=020731BL-Patch

Release Notes for Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=020731BL-Release_Notes

List of Bugs Fixed in Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=020731BL-Bug_Fixes

So now it is wait-and-see until this thing turns out to be solid or until we see an "SP3a".

"Do You Feel Lucky Today?"

Warm regards,

Stu

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