On Tue, 19 Apr 2016 21:42:41 +0100, Bernard Burton
wrote:

Slowly recovering from a major loss of files after a hard drive failure.
Still awaiting a part (wrong one came today, so more delay), then can get
the second drive, with much of my data on, back in operation. Its been a
struggle trying to get old copies of XP to work properly, and have had to
reformat and start again 3 times before I could get stable running.
Advice
to any other XP users in a similar predicament., do not attempt in
upgrade
an old XP (SP2 fo instance) to SP3, and turn off automatic upgrades,
otherwise you will get a file from MS that runs every couple of minutes
and
which blacks out the screen for about 5 seconds. B

For what it's worth and probably too late now, you can make your own XP
install disc with SP3 pre-applied. I have done this, but it's so long ago
now I cannot remember the steps. I believe the tool was called "nLite" and
the buzzword for this trick is slipstreaming.

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