I can only speak for myself, but here is my experience with this whole
thing.
I use Norton AntiSpam and it was causing Outlook to freeze after I installed
Office XP SP3. I thought I was really clever by fixing the problem using
System Restore. Actually, it DID fix that problem because SP3 did appear to
be rolled back. My plan: wait until Norton AntiSpam has a fix and then go
forward again.
So, Norton released its fix and I installed it. I went to the office update
site and it produced errors trying to detect my current settings. So I went
for the manual approach and downloaded the 16MB patch file directly. That
file would not install either - it couldn't find the right environment. So
I pulled out a bigger hammer and downloaded the big 56MB full download. It
wouldn't install either.
So I got another clever idea. Why not just undo the System Restore? I did
it and now Office was back at SP3. But unfortunately Norton was also back
to its old buggy self. So, thinking I'm almost home I went for Norton's
Live update. No dice. It thought I was up to date. It couldn't tell that
its patch was undone by System Restore.
At this point, I had enough. Time for the sledge hammer. I uninstalled and
reinstalled Office and applied SP3. I uninstalled and reinstalled Norton
and did Live Update. Finally, Outlook doesn't lock up when Norton AntiSpam
runs. It still does, however, pop up the dialog saying that something is
accessing the address book.
It's not what I would like, but I'll live with it for now.