With just a few days from its official release, the Windows XP Service Pack 3 is already receiving a large numer of post-instalation complaints.

Apparently, the up-date causes a series of problems, from random blue-screens to continuous reboots.

Jesper Johanson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft, who now runs a Windows blog, explained the situation in one of his recent blog posts:
"At this point, I want to clarify that the endless rebooting is not at all related to SP3 per se. The problem is that with some configurations, SP3 causes the computer to crash during boot, and Windows XP, by default, is set up to automatically reboot when it crashes. That is why you end up in the endless rebooting scenario."

According to Mr. Johanson, the easiest solution is to disable the "automatic restart on system failure" option, while operating in safe mode.

Errors and system failure are quite common with Microsoft’s service packs and usually, answers and solutions become available on a very short term.

Microsoft also announced that the installation of the XP SP3 will not allow users to downgrade from Internet Explorer 7 to IE 6.

The company stated that a series of tests and investigations are being conducted and as soon as results will show, the customers will be immediately informed. Also, through one of it’s officials, Microsoft asked its buyers to contact the Microsoft Customer Support Service on any issues concerning the Windows XP SP3 installation.