So I’m working on a friend’s PC. Simple nuke-it-from-orbit, format, and reinstall of Windows XP. Should be a piece of cake, right? Should even be easier due to the fact it’s got a recovery partition on it. Just when things look easy….

All was fine until I installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 on the machine. The box rebooted, then …. rebooted. And rebooted. And rebooted. And rebooted. And rebooted… well, you get the idea. Dammit.

So I figure something went awry, and I re-recovered from the recovery partition. Again. Instead of installing post-SP2 updates, then going to SP3, I just dropped SP3 on there. I was welcomed with a happily rebooting computer. And rebooting. And rebooting. Damn.

Now I was starting to run out of ideas, but I figured maybe the “system administrator, full SP3 300MB update” might do some mojo. So I re-re-recovered the box, and downloaded and applied the 300MB update rather than the small download one. The box rebooted, I crossed my fingers and… it rebooted. And rebooted. And rebooted. Craptoast.

So, after three epic fails at this, I started googling. And you know what I found? This is a KNOWN ISSUE with installing SP3 on some AMD-equipped systems. Which is exactly what this poor HP Pavilion is. I found some help at this link, which describes the problem in detail. Bottom line is, I had to re-re-re-recover the machine, let it come up, and apply a registry edit, then install the bug-ridden SP3 update. Now the box is humming along, installing the rest of the hotfixes.

People wonder why I hate Windows. This is why. This is exactly why. Screw you, Microsoft. Screw you.