HP driver glitch the cause of many complaints?
Microsoft's third, and final, service pack for its Windows XP operating system may have been a little late in arriving, but delays weren't enough to ensure a problem-free delivery to the millions of XP users.
Following the arrival of XP SP3 on May 7th, various complaints surfaced from users suffering with endless reboots and system crashes. A situation not too dissimilar to the launch of Windows Vista SP1, which also led to various users suffering from endless reboots.
This time around, the problem has been narrowed to HP machines running AMD processors. Though angry consumers have been quick to show their frustrations at both AMD and Microsoft, it now appears that neither are to blame.
The problem, it seems, is that HP has been shipping desktop PCs with a Windows install tailored for Intel-based machines. The pre-loaded operating system is said to feature an Intel power-management driver, Intelppm.sys, which tries to load after upgrading to SP3 and thus causes endless reboots.
Microsoft, however, appears to have known about the issue since May 6th, a day prior to the worldwide release of SP3 via Windows Update. It was then that Microsoft published a related knowledge base article, #888372, on its Help and Support website.
Microsoft's current solution is for users suffering from the problem to boot into safe mode, in which the problematic Intel driver wouldn't be loaded. Once in Windows, a simple registry fix should solve the issue.
AMD, through no fault of its own, has been on the receiving end of most of the bad publicity surrounding the XP SP3 woes. Hoping to clear up the matter, Julia Clark, AMD representative, says:
"The problem is the result of applying a non-AMD processor Windows operating system image to AMD processor-based PCs; this is a configuration issue only and not an HP platform, AMD processor, or operating system issue. The number of systems impacted to date is minimal, Microsoft expects to issue a fix within a few days, and more importantly, we have not seen users experience data loss as a result of this issue."
Useful links
Microsoft knowledge base article 888372
