If you have a Hewlett-Packard desktop computer with an AMD processor and are running the factory install of Windows XP, you may wish to know that, as configured from the factory, your computer will stop working, in a way that will do no irreparable harm but may startle you considerably, if you install XP Service Pack 3.
Oddly, this is not Microsoft’s fault, it’s HP’s; they were lazy and didn’t remove an Intel processor driver, intelppm.sys, from the disk image used to create the AMD systems. This is normally not a problem, but when restarting after the application of XPSP3, it becomes one, to the tune of rebooting forever and ever until you stick your foot in the door and boot into safe mode. I ran into this interesting state of affairs this morning.
The fix that worked for me is relatively simple – get into the recovery console and tell it “disable intelppm”, and Bob’s your uncle. There are a few other ways of getting it done, including one for regedit studs. More information is here.
There are also a couple of other things that can cause SP3 to have reboot problems, but that seems to be the most prevalent and it’s the one I have personal experience with, so I figured I’d do a little signal repeating. More info on the other failure states can be found here (and if you follow the links far enough, you’ll end up at the first page I linked about).
Benjamin D. Hutchins is an author, public relations writer, and semiprofessional muser upon the random. His other nonfiction writings can be found here and here.
