Thanks, Ravencajun. Before I saw those careful instructions, my daughter's PC was prompting to install SP3 - so I did (about a week ago). At first I thought we got lucky and all went well. She has so little on her computer that I thought it was a good place to start. However, now she's getting flickering - if that's the right word for it. For instance, she's looking at her inbox in gmail - and it keeps scrolling over and over so she isn't able to click on one email and open it. It's also scrolling too quickly to hit the sign out button. Ultimately I hit alt-cont-delete to end gmail. I believe we saw this flickering in another program the other day - it seems that little green boxes were flashing at points along the screen. I realize this may have nothing to do with SP3. So I should probably mention, she has a dell dimension 4500 - 40GB hard drive, 768 MB Ram, Firefox browser. It's possible all the trouble has come within the Firefox browser - I'm not sure. Anything else that might need fixing or updating that could cause this. Thanks. Lynn.

I luv it when people put up a fight instead of hauling the confuser off to the repair shop. Great going. Google is or should be everybody's friend. So too is Youtube these days as it seems more and more tutorials are appearing on there. A couple of points you never mentioned but no doubt thought about. If your machine came with SP2 it might be safe to say it is 4 years old or better. If so you probably would be unhappy trying to run Win7 on it even with updates that possibly cannot be migrated to a new computer you will no doubt buy sometime down the road. Money. Not having to buy Win7 saved you plenty, keeping and updating XP never cost a dime, frustration yes but no cash. Had you bought Win7 you would have an excess copy once you buy a new computer - unless you self build of course. Nice work.

Absolutely owbist, back up everything and do an image if you can with Acronis. And follow all the download and install directions to the letter which means turning off all antivirus programs, firewalls, spyware protection and any other running programs, even better install it in safe mode where you have only minimal processes running. Using the cd or the full version is much better than doing it through update from everything I have seen and read on all the tech forums, you get the full install and it seems to go easier. So having the cd is a good thing plus you have it to keep should you ever need to format your pc and need it again. There just are no guarantees that things will go well, many thought they did have a good install and things are now showing up, why that is who knows, it could be specific to something they have on their pc that sp3 was not compatible with, think of how many programs there are out there, it is impossible to make any thing compatible with all. (however the big companies work with microsoft to make these things work prior to release that is why the beta testing for so long, so it doing what it is with programs like Norton and some of the other big names is not a good reflection) Unfortunately there were more people that had their restore points disappear than just that one instance and they had not changed anything so it is definitely affecting restore points on some computers. I have kept my pc fully updated since sp2 so there fore I have pretty much everything I need from sp3 already, at this point my decision is not to install with a wait and see point of view. What each person choses to do is up to them, it is however essential to know all the information so you can do so in an educated manner. That is why I am posting when something new has been discovered that they did not know, that way we stay educated as to what needs to be done and what to expect. But then you also have to expect the unexpected! LOL

Sorry for all the confusion...I'll try to explain more clearly. Ravencajun answered my 1st posted question which lead into my 2nd concern as follows: 1. Desktop is an old Dell with XP which has word, excel, powerpoint 2000 on it. Bitdefender is my protection. 2. Laptop is a year old HP with Vista Home Premimun with kaspersky protection. Kaspersky finds vunerabilities on the laptop which came with word, excel, powerpoint 2000 on it. These 3 programs are the vulnerabilities that show up during my scan on the laptop along with a Microsoft Office/MS09.dll. Now my concern is that Microsoft has no fix for these vulnerabilities for either vista or xp. I use all 3 programs quite a bit with very sensitive information on them and am concerned about attackers being able to take control of my 2 computers with these vulnerabilities that have no fix solution by Microsoft. I don't know if SP3 on my desktop would correct the problem but like ravencajun because the computer is old I don't want to chance downloading it. Bitdefender doesn't show vulnerabilities during a scan but I am assuming that regardless of whether it is XP or Vista.... Microsoft Office has these problems with no solutions for a fix. I hope this makes things more clear as to my concern. It is about Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint versions 2000). Thanks for everyone trying to help me...I need it....