My great grandpa saved some old melon seeds (watermelon and cantaloupe) probably over 20-30 years ago. Having been my first year gardening (I'm 15 now.), I was rather excited to try to grow those seeds when I found them packed away in our freezer in old glass Gerber jars wrapped in orange and blue napkins. As soon as I popped the lid the smell hit me. It smelled amazing! Anyways, almost every seed has germinated, and I've got beautiful, robust melons climbing up a trellis. They're the healthiest I've ever seen actually....I also planted bush beans that I found alongside the melons, likely saved by my great grandpa at the same time as the melons. I got 100% germination and they're the healthiest bush beans in the garden. Not only were they the first to germinate, but they also have had the earliest blossoms! It's amazing if you ask me. What's exciting is that my mom has stated over and over that the melons my great grandpa grew were the best she'd ever had.

I would not do the one through windows update and go online with out the protection especially since you said you had a problem with it when doing it that way before. The stand alone file you simply select to download it to your pc, to like your desktop or where ever you choose, then once you have the internet connection disabled and have your security programs off then go to where you downloaded that file to and double click it to begin the install of it. Yes you can remove IE8 through add remove before you do sp3 and it will go back to IE6, then as soon as you are back online (with your security programs back on) from the install of sp3 go immediately to your windows updates site and get any other updates and you should be offered IE8. the guidelines link Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) Installation Guidelines where to download the stand alone sp3 file from, click the download button and save to your pc, ignore any info there saying it is for IT professionals and not for single pc, this is the only download and is the one everyone uses when not doing it through windows updates. Windows XP Service Pack 3 as to foxit reader, it is a much better choice than Adobe but you do have to make sure it is always updated to the latest version because it also has been targeted by the bad guys. Opening pdf files online has always been a bad habit that is not something new but now more are hitting it with some bad exploits. So whether or not you choose to continue opening them online would be up to you. Since you have foxit now have you removed the Adobe Pdf reader? if not you do still need to keep it updated because having any program on the pc that has not been updated can be a security risk.

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.

blocking sp3 does not in anyway block any other updates so do not worry about that. Minnie what has you confused? did you not know sp3 had been installed on your pc? It went out through auto updates as stated in the original post. susanjn be very very happy do a little dance and rejoice you are one of the lucky ones that is all I can say. (or you have not noticed yet the effects) The horrors others have experienced are quite true and quite numerous and still happening. Anyone doing the install with out first disabling all other programs and most especially any type of security programs including AV, firewall etc can definitely expect problems. Best way to do it still is to go to the actual sp3 download site and download the full sp3 update version(NOT from windows updates), then turn off every thing on the pc or best start in safe mode and try to install. If you have IE7 you better uninstall it prior to putting on sp3 as specified in the instructions listed in an above post. I still don't have it don't plan on getting it.