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.

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.

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

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.