XP SP3 Why Me? - The Intel Driver
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The problem occurs on HP computers with AMD processors because during the manufacturing process, the same XP disk image was used to install the operating system on both AMD-based and Intel-based computers. Because the image is the same, computers with either type of processor will have the intelppm.sys driver installed on it. And this is bad for AMD-based machines, which already have the amdk8.sys driver to act as the Intel driver's counterpart.
In fact, the problem has been known to exist since 2004, when Microsoft released XP SP2. A support document published back then said, “Under this configuration, after the computer is upgraded to Windows XP SP2 or SP3, the Intel processor driver may try to load because an orphaned registry key remains.”
I'm sure you're wondering why this is only a problem when someone tries to download the latest Service Pack. According to Johansson, the problem occurs when the driver both exists on the disk and is configured to load on the registry. He says, “HP's images have the registry key set but no driver on disk. When the service pack is installed the pre-existing directive in the registry is read, the installer lays down the driver on the disk, and on the next reboot it launches, causing the crash.” This basically resulted in Microsoft putting the blame for this problem on HP.
HP responded by shifting the blame right back to Microsoft. They claimed that SP3 copies the driver to the computer because this driver was not on the computer before the update. This is yet to be confirmed or denied, but Johansson believes that the problem starts and ends with the registry key. He says, “I would expect that the installer looks at all the drivers listed in the registry and simply makes sure that there are updated versions of all of them, without checking first whether they existed prior to installing the service pack.” But I'd bet if you're saddled with this problem right now, you could care less about who's fault it is and more about how to fix it.
Not so fast. First there is the matter of precluding this problem before you download SP3. You can use a tool that Johansson developed (located on his blog) specifically for this problem. Not only will it check to see if you have an AMD-based computer, but it will check whether the Intel driver is set to load and give you the option of disabling it. If you already know you have an AMD-based computer, you can disable the driver by running either of these commands in Command Prompt:
reg add HKLMSystemCurrentControlSetServicesIntelppm /v Start/d 4 /t REG_DWORD
sc config intelppm start= disabled
You should now be able to install SP3 without this problem occurring. The next section will go over what to do if you already have this problem, plus other problems that the release of SP3 was kind enough to give us.
Next: Solutions >>
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