The much anticipated Windows XP Service Pack 3 was recently pushed into Windows Update and is now causing a lot of headaches of AMD CPU users.
One user reported “I just installed Windows XP SP3 and after completing the processes and when the system reboots, the system cannot proceed to lad the Windows. It just displays the flash screen of Windows then after it reboots again.”
According to Jesper Johansson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft, the problem is affecting only AMD equipped PCs sold by HP (and a few other manufacturers), because HP deploys the same image to Intel based computers that they do to AMD based computers.
These AMD computers have the intelppm.sys driver installed and running. That driver provides power management on Intel based computers.
So hopefully if you are having this problem you are pointing your finger in the right direction, not towards Microsoft but towards your PCs manufacturer. I have installed Service Pack 3 on two computers and both of them are running as smooth as they ever have.