I know this story has been around since last Friday, however it wasn't until now that I could find official reference on Microsoft's website. I guess MS did it big this time, fortunately I haven't suffered from such slowdowns in all this time I've been running my patched version of XP Pro.

After you install Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1), your programs may take as much as ten times as long to start.

This problem may occur if the programs you run frequently allocate and deallocate large blocks of memory. Changes in Windows XP SP1 in the memory management system have caused this operation to take significantly longer than with pre-SP1 Windows XP.

Microsoft is offering a fix to those severely affected, the patch is not available for download but instead you need to call MS' Product Support (at no cost) in order to obtain the fix, otherwise you will have to wait for SP2 to arrive.

Check my reply to this thread, the file can now be found online / Per

"otherwise you will have to wait for SP2 to arrive"

That's disgraceful!

There is also a VPN disconnection problem after 1 minute with XP SP1 that you cannot fix unless you uninstall SP1 or wait til SP2. You can call them and get a fix, but I was under the impression that in that instance it wasn't a free call for a quick fix. And thier knowledge database forums offered no help to me when I had this problem.

Does anyone know more about this patch? Like where we could get it without having to call Microsoft and get put on hold for 30 minutes .

I guess you don't need a patch if you don't suffer the problem, that's the way they are looking at it.

Now, what I dislike is that Microsoft doesn't seem to be aware (or doesn't care) that while their phone support can be decent in the US, in South America it's been a pain for me even trying to reactivate my Windows XP installation, I have to call Argentina and they wouldn't answer... I will try again tomorrow, hopefully I'll have more luck then.

I can understand them...

This way people who have pirated XP won't be able to just download the fix from MS' webpage...

Though if you've bought it, it's a bit of a hassle having to call them...

Oh, well... I'm glad I'm sticking with w2k

Sorry Mr G, but that sounds a bit like some of that RIAA logic, like "ban home computers so people stop downloading mp3s" type of nonsense.

I have a user at work with this problem. We are legal, paying MS customers. But I should be able to download this fix without having to endure some call centre prat for 1 hour on the phone. If this is a known fault with the Windows XP product then a fix should be posted on MS's web site, and simply saying "wait for service pack 2" is competely and utterly unacceptable.

This kind of nonsense is so commonly put up with from the computing industry, but in other industries it would NOT BE TOLERATED! Can you imagine the outcry if durex released a batch of condoms that ALWAYS BROKE? Or if BMW release a car which could have possible problems with its breaks?

An operating system can be a mission critical product, and I could potentially loose business or earnings because of the problems with XP discussed in this posting.

Perhaps they should come up with some sort of web-based extension of their phone service.. Like a secure site that you put your cdkey and activation code in to verify if you are legit or not, then you can download the update.

I don't know.. It sounds really silly to me.

Same here Mr.G, same here...

Seriously though I can't understand how M$ can get away with this... But I guess if you’re that big it doesn't really matter what you do...

I was wondering when someone would do us the public service of posting this patch.