Last week, there was something wrong with the Service Pack 3 update on some Windows XP clients. The update for SP3 had one or more major bugs in it. I saw it happen on different architectures with different hardware.

Like we know from Windows, you have to guess what the problem is. And of course, it took a while before I got the real point.

The problem started when some Windows XP clients, at random, choose to freeze once in a while. But offcourse, the once in a while became more often.

First, I thought there were some problems on the network itself. Kind of strange, but you never know. After checking the Linux servers and clients it became clear that the network was doing fine. It was almost sure that it must have been a Windows issue.

So, what's next? Trying to flush the DNS, reboot a couple of times, because you never know. It seemed to have helped, but I didn't get a real answer to the solution. I still didn't know what the problem was.

The problem even got worse. More Windows XP clients had the same issue. Slowing down and freezing, resulting in long waiting times. Then I noticed a difference. The clients which didn't had the Service Pack 3 update, were still operating normaly. The ones that got their Service Pack update weren't.

So, finally I found the cause of this problem. Some clients didn't had the update yet. Those clients were still working fine. Only the clients that got the new Service Pack had these freezing problems. The solution was quite simple: remove Service Pack 3 from the system and most of the times it was rolling on the flow again.

But, sometimes the solution wasn't that simple. On some windows clients, the Service Pack 3 removal killed the client again after removing it.

Someones had their Internet Explorer 7 removed, and the 6th version of IE didn't work anymore. Other ones had their Microsoft Office installation partly removed.

You can fix these problems by installing Internet Explorer 7 from the Microsoft download site and repairing or reinstalling your Office installation. I hope you don't need this one.