Probably for the same reason that you can drive to work and not be
involved in an accident and the next guy gets in one. Sp3 should work,
and you should be able to drive to work. Life happens. Maybe its the
hardware, or some program that isn't compatible, or malware, or someone
previously tampered with their registry, the moon. Who knows? The
results people are posting are very wide from working great to a dead
pc. It does seem to be a gamble doesn't it. Mine worked fine.G
I agree with everything you say, but just wanted to add the following:
1. Whether with XP SP3 or anything else, you always hear much more
about failures than about successes. Few people, for example, write to
a newsgroup to say that everything went well, but someone who is
having a problem is very likely to come to these newsgroups to ask for
help.
2. So, although some people have problems with SP3, the chances of a
problem occurring are much less than they might appear at first
glance. The frequency of problems is rare, and although "it does seem
to be a gamble," it's a very slight one.
My personal experience is that I installed SP3 on my two computer that
run XP here, and neither had any problems with it at all. That matches
the experience of others I know who have installed it and not had a
problem. In fact I personally know of only person, an acquaintance who
lives not far away, who had a problem with it, and in his case, I'm
not surprised. He thinks he knows what he's doing, but in practice he
knows much less than he thinks he does, and he often gets himself into
trouble.
I'm just glad mine is working, and hope