Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) is now available and will even show up with automatic updates. While there really isn’t anything earth shattering about SP3 for XP, it certainly streamlines the process of installing Windows XP from scratch, such as when needing to reinstall Windows.

For the most part, SP3 is just a convenient rollup of all prior patches since and including Windows XP Service Pack 2. If nothing else, it allows a person to keep their PC a bit cleaner since each individual update will many times leave behind and uninstall directory - compressed, but still unneeded.

I have seen some users warn that after installing XP SP3 their computer wouldn’t even boot, even couldn’t get into the BIOS screen. That may be true, but a coincidence. I know of no way for the installation of a Windows Service Pack to prevent the PC from presenting you the option of entering the BIOS screen. If that isn’t happening, you have a hardware issue.

Certainly, if it works don’t fix it. I see Windows XP Service Pack 3 as a faster way of setting up new PC’s, not a way of fixing old ones.

If XP is sluggish and you decide on a reinstall (after a complete backup, better yet - 2), SP3 will make your life easier and the process quicker.

But if it works, don’t fix it.

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If you want to hear the most awful hold music available on the planet, dial up your favorite computer hardware or software vendor, use your apache tracking skills to negotiate the phone maze until you are finally on hold for a live person (you hope!).

Today it was Trend Micro’s turn to get called. Call right when they open, it doesn’t matter, all technicians are already busy helping someone else.

Is the horrible hold music designed to get you to hang up and go away? I finally recognized the raucous cacophony to be a Spanish guitar version of Don McLean’s American Pie.

The other day I forced myself to call Fortinet’s tech support again. They have had the same awful hold music for years. In fact, it isn’t even really music, just computer generated tones, I think.

Of course, all the while your are on hold you are being told:

1. You called at a bad time (your fault); but we won’t tell you when a good time is.
2. Your call is important to us; yep, and the check’s in the mail too.
3. You really should get your answers from our useless knowledge base on our impossible to navigate website, that way the few foreigners employed as “engineers” can do something more important than talking to you - like go pray at the temple.

Well, I would write more, but the tortured ding dong rendition of Billy Joel’s Just the Way You Are is interfering with my normal brainwaves…I think I’m unable to continue…ahhh