no. Read the fix list. It's also a "must" for any program that requires it.

it is wise to install any service pack. Well most of the time, at least for an OS it is. Service packs are known to fix vunerabilities and bugs in the OS thus making it safer and more efficient.

A few of my frieds had major issues after instlling XP sp1. (mostly athlon systems, games ran a lot slower...) I had none, but it's hard to say that sp1 fixed anything. The way I see it there is no major difference. I still use the xp without the sp1.

Hi Tomay,
Thanks for sharing your opinions just an FYI. We are talking about Win2K SP3 and not WinXP SP1. That being said I conducted I poll in this messageboard about a month ago and about 90 percent of people said yes their experience was positive after installing SP3. So go for it . However do it wisely, just make a backup before hand, that way if you don't like it you can always switch back. I recommend making a backup in a 3rd party application, because if you use the Service packs rollback feature you'll be stuck with 100-300 megs of old files that will only slow down your computer so store a backup of your boot partition on another drive. If you don't have a backup program I have noticed that there a couple of sector by sector freeware backup utilities. I'm sure somebody else could name one for you. I am happy to share a utility with you by Microsoft called RawRead, but please note that this is an internal tool and not a commercial product. That being said it's very easy to use, runs in dos, supports only Fat12/16/32, is slow, and can't resize partitions. In fact if you resize your partition and try to restore it'll fail! This program also works great on floppies for those who want it.
The usage is simple:
To save an image:
 
D:\Images> RawRead C: 11-5-2002.img /a /b /c /v
 
 
To restore an image:
D:\Images> RawWrite 11-5-2002.img C: /V
 
The /V verify that the data was written correctly. /A I believe only captures allocated clusters. /C is for compression anb /B I'll have to look up . /B scans the fat for bad clusters. I don't think it scandisks first, it'll just fail if you have bad clusters so run scandisk first okay . Defragging before hand will also speed things up a bit and lower the image size.
 
 
Click here to download RawRead 3.02
 
By the way I don't thave the RawInfo.exe file. If somebody has that please post it. I have the version that just reads and writes partitions RawInfo.exe will let you find out information about the image saved, I don't think you can view the files or anything it just tells you the geometry:
Fat 16, 200320 Clusters or something.
 
Also a little note on the command line switches /? will list them so don't worry if you forget them.
 
Ciao,
Christian

I have noticed no difference between a Win2k box and a Win2k sp3 box.
 
As for WinXP Sp1
i only noticed about a 3-6fps loss, which might be considered alot, but i could care less, i'll do a major upgrade soon

What did you lose FPS in? Was it using OpenGL or Direct3D?

how about SP1 for winxp? is that worth installing?

Read the fix list. If you don't need the fixes then don't install it....but I recommend that you do since it fixes several HUGE security flaws that MS doesn't even mention in the fix list. THANKS MS! ;(

We already held a poll and there were like 11 positive votes for Sp3 and one negative. So most people were better off after installing it. If you search for posts made by ChristianB you ought to be able to find it.
-Christian

I was hesitant at first to install SP3. I did have SP2 from my first use of 2k.
 
Security flaws? Not M$! Must be thinking of another O/S:
 
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/838272.asp?cp1=1
 
Only 65 in one year. Glad I run Opera, not Idiot Exploiter!

1. Obviously you haven't heard that that report is funded by MS.
2. Recent news of a security flaw that MS judged as moderate when actually it was a sever flaw.
3. Like TV, just because there's a site about it doesn't mean it's true...especially from....MSNBC.