Originally Posted by blizbo

I tried it once; caused conflict

How did you install it, automatic update or full download from MS's website? What kind of "conflict" did you encounter? Thats a bit too ambiguous for us to try to help you. Did it successfully install? Do you have a service pack already installed? SP 3 IS NOT cumulative so you must have at lease SP 1 already installed.

As far as I'm concerned, and I might be wrong, if you can't install SP 3 but you do have 2 installed as well as the rest of the updates then you should be fine without it but you really do need 2 as it is very important. Also MS has totally abandoned support for anything other than SP 2 or 3.

I am using sp3, I actually dont feel any big difference but PEACE of mind.

You should not feel any difference. SP3 was basically of rollup of all patches and updates between SP1 and prior to SP3. So if you have been properly maintaining the computer prior to that, moving to SP3 was not much more than a name change. Yes, a few other changes were in there, but for the most part, SP3 was SP2 + updates since SP2 + a couple new updates.

As far as I'm concerned, and I might be wrong, if you can't install SP 3 but you do have 2 installed as well as the rest of the updates then you should be fine without it

I think that is bad advice. SP3 is almost 18months old. If you have not installed SP3, you are behind. If you can't install SP3, something is wrong and you should fix it, then install SP3.