Windows Service Pack 3 eats 45% of CPU power...

[valis]

Well for what it's worth I have 4 of my 5 machines here running Xp32 sp3 (the 5th runs the Debian linux server distribution). On the oldest one (dual p4-era Prestonia Xeon box) I saw little change in cpu usage while on the 3 newer ones (core/core2 cpu's) I can see a slight performance improvement in most things. The only thing that got more sluggish was network file operations. But this was done to bring Xp in line with the new security model & really doesn't indicate a change in actual performance, just the way that the system caches network file operations is now a bit more 'apparent' (not as bad as Vista pre-sp1 though). I see no background hardware or software tasks using excessive cpu, and if you see interrupt requests eating cpu then this indicates a driver issue.

Again you don't NEED sp3, but if you want to run it do some troubleshooting when you see issues to identify the conflict or failing hardware/software.

[braincell]

I'm getting great flow with SP3.

[petal]

On microsofts recommendation I just reinstalled windows (again). They were full of confidence that this would cure more problem.
I only installed Windows SP1 and on top of that SP3. Alas, the problem remains. Even on my machine where nothing but Microsoft's own code is installed.
One interesting point for us Scope-lovers is that I even removed my three scope cards to see if they somehow were the cause of the problem, fortunately they were not. Even after I had removed them from my system the problem remained.

I give up - I'm not gonna install SP3. From now on I'm only gonna run Windows SP2.

Thanks for all the help you've given me - It was much appreciated!
Thomas

[Fluxpod]

i cant resist to suspect that SP3 shall frustrate XP users...in order to migrate them to Vista.

Hpefully it is coming up with SP2 again.

Sp3 working fine here on a c2d.Absolut 0 problems.May i am just lucky

[fidox]

using SP3 here too, no problems at all,

my main audio computer:
Abit IC7 - socket 478 - 875chipset
Intel Pentium 4 2.8
1.5GB dual channel 400mhz RAM
IDE HDD 80GB
Ati Radeon 9600 (just display drivers installed)
USB midi keyboard (Evolution)
all other devices disabled (printer, secondary usb, ports)

Luna II + 2 X Pulsar XTC
WinXP SP3 - Standard PC mode
Steinberg Cubase 3 SE

all win effects disabled, nothing else running in the background, disabled unused windows services...