As most computer technicians should know by now, Windows XP Service Pack 3 has been available via Windows update since the 6th of may so enough time has passed for people to install it and some problems to arise. This article contains information that all computer technicians should know about Windows XP Service Pack 3 including what SP3 fixes, whats new, important information and some known problems and solutions.
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The other day I came across a clients computer that was getting the infamous Blue Screen of Death (aka BSOD). However, since the computer had the “Automatically Restart if the event of a bluescreen” option switched on, the system would restart and the blue screen disappear too quickly for me to read. Most technicians will just go into Safe Mode and switch this off, but what if you cant get into Safe Mode? What happens if the option to “Disable Automatic Restart” doesn’t show in the F8 menu either?
I had this happen to me and I found a way around it. Read on.
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Microsoft Windows hasn’t natively used DOS since the days of Windows98. However, for a computer technician DOS commands are still very useful even in the XP and Vista environment.

For many techies this stuff is old hat and is mainly for the younger generation, however the old hats may see some commands that they didn’t know about. By no means is this exhaustive list of DOS commands are there are thousands more (Google them if you need them). This list has commands that are particularly useful to technicians repairing computers.
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In this article we will show you how to create a Windows XP Virtual Machine. What is a virtual machine you may ask?
One of our guest writers explains it in great detail in one of our previous articles titled Virtualization and its Uses in the Tech World:

A Virtual Machine is a piece of software which emulates (pretends), to be machine (computer) to do an abnormal task such as running Windows on a Macintosh computer for example, to occur via the trapping of computer instructions. It is quite literally a computer running ON a computer. One of the by-products of this is that the two systems can be entirely separated from each other, which allows a level of security that just can’t be matched.

Now, lets make your own XP Virtual Machine.
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As a computer technician, here is a problem I have been coming across more and more. About 30secs to 1 minute after booting into Windows the computer starts lagging heavily. When CTRL+ALT+DEL is pressed it shows that svchost.exe is using up maximum CPU resources and only occurs when Automatic Updates is enabled. Microsoft has recognized this problem and has released a patch. However, on all computers I have worked on with this problem, the Microsoft patches don’t fix the problem. This is a guide on how to fix this problem with svchost using maximum CPU.
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As most computer users already know, you need a good antivirus to help keep your computer safe. Anti-virus programs such as Norton and AVG usually do a good job at getting rid of them. However, sometimes the antivirus cant completely delete the virus. In this tutorial we show you how to delete those undeleable viruses, trojans and malware.
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Most users of Microsoft’s email/contact/calendar software “Outlook” have most likely come across this problem at some point. It can occur when Outlook is closed and then the user tries to open it again from its system tray (near the clock) icon. This icon will remain in the system tray until the computer is rebooted and can cause problems if Outlook is shared because the database remains open while this icon is active.
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Some users, especially those who aren’t running Windows XP Service Pack 2 occasionally receive messages to their computers with the title “Messenger Service”. This is not to be confused with “MSN Messenger”. These messages commonly say you have viruses, adware, Spyware or other nasties on your system and you can fix them by going to their site and buying their software.
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There comes a time in the life of each hard-drive when it just won’t access any of the data on the drive anymore. The same applies to CDs and DVDs which, due to their fragile nature, get scratched and scraped beyond readability. As Murphy’s law would often have it, it happens exactly to the files you need when you need them. In order to preserve your data (and your sanity in case data starts mysteriously disappearing), you need to know exactly what can be done to make sure you don’t find yourself losing important files.

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One can never have too much (free) RAM. As with quite a few short computer proverbs, this one holds almost too true. As years have passed from old operating systems, which used as little as 8 MB of RAM, something was bound to happen. Our dear Windows OS has turned from a resource hog by the standards of 486es to an even bigger resource hog of today’s P4s and A64s. Despite all the new components and large-sized memories that are already measured in gigabytes, something always decides to hog up the RAM. Poof - instead of 1 GB of free RAM, you are lucky if you have half of that available. And if you’re trying to run Windows XP on something as low as 256MB or even 128MB, even booting up becomes tedious.
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