Microsoft: PLEASE re-think SP3!

I found that Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 1 is probably the single worst piece of pre-release software I have ever dealt with.

A few days ago I decided to install this service pack on my PC at home. It got about 3/4 of the way through the process, and said that there was insufficient space to complete the install and offered to roll back what it had done. Nice that the install didn't check how much space was there before it started! This would have been fine, except once it rolled back it gave me the message "Windows has been partially updated, and may not work properly." Greeaaaaat... Well, unfortunately they were right for once. Nothing worked right after that.

I figured maybe I would have better with a clean XP install. I installed XP from scratch on a new larger hard drive. As soon as the XP install finished and was at SP2, I ran the XP SP3 install. After it was complete I discovered that it apparently didn't install IE7, or Windows Media Player 11. Not only that, but IE6 would freeze every time I tried to use it! Ok, so maybe I'll just uninstall SP3 and wait for release. That should work, right? HA!

I was notified at the beginning on the uninstall process that my install of Microsoft Office may not work afterward, and that I should run Windows updates afterward... Keep that part in mind. The uninstall completed. Sure enough, as they said, I went to open Outlook and it gave me an error. Now for the best part...Remember how they said I should run Windows updates? Well, I did. EVERY UPDATE FAILED...... How nice. Sooooooo, I reinstalled Windows again. Thanks for wasting four hours of my life Microsoft! Please, don't release this patch. I can only imagine the problems I'll have if clients start installing this!