WILL XP SP3 CRIPPLE DD10's COPY PARTITION UTILITY?

There are many who believe that certain updates from Microsoft are intentionally designed to thwart copying of XP (and presumably VISTA).

These conspiracy minded thinkers believe this is done underhandedly in a covert way (to maim and cripple rather than kill off a third party copying software [so as to not make bad press ect.]).

Now that XP's SP3 is almost ready for prime time I wonder if it will become more difficult to copy XP in DD10?

I have noticed that over time DD10 went from a flawless copying vehicle for duplicating XP partitions to a hit-and-miss record of "good copies"/ "corrupt copies" (could True Image be a target as well?).

I have tried the dedicated copy partition utility (free ware) "DrvClonerXP" and it too produces corrupt copies similar to DD10's (at 555 bytes this should not be surprising I guess).

I have often wondered if these corruptions were due to the constant updates put out by Microsoft ( if not done intentionally then perhaps as a product of complicated code patching).

Today I installed the pre-release version of SP3 and it seems to be innocuous so far. My setups are pretty solid to date so I am not too motivated for many more trials.

It will be interesting to notice the posts in this forum after the release of XP SP3 and see if the dire predictions of difficult copying comes true. See http://www.futurepower.net/microsoft.htm (from a link of a fellow poster).

Incidentally XP SP3 is pretty big--My home edition now weights in at a hefty 3.13 gigs!! The Windows folder is now 1.47 gigs by itself! See https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=193556 For comparisons of some my previous XP Home install numbers.



I Installed SP3 over a clean install of the XP SP2 Retail Disc I already have and it went off pretty smoothly. There were no duplicate files (or other anomalies so far). I downloaded it as a 'file' and installed it separately.

The good news is that after installing XP's SP3, the only other update that was recommended for download was Microsoft's Window's "Malicious Software removal Tool" at 7.5 mega bytes. That was it.