Downloads of Windows XP SP3 are still live and they're going to remain this way, despite widespread problems. The final service pack for XP was offered to the general public on May 6, 2008. Accompanying the release was a consistent volume of documentation, complete with resources describing various issues that survived the RTM stage. The launch of XP SP3 RTM Build 5512 was postponed initially for approximately a week due to incompatibility problems, but as the downloads went live the past week, Microsoft is not considering pulling the service pack.

A company representative denied that a scenario where XP SP3 RTM downloads will be discontinued due to the problems end users experienced as they attempted to install the release, is among Microsoft's plans, according to Mary Jo Foley. The distribution of XP SP3 will continue in the same manner although the service pack has been plagued with a variety of issues, the most severe of which being associated with updates of XP SP2 images running on AMD-based machines, created via the System Preparation (Sysprep) tool on Intel-processor-based computers.

But the "Stop 0x0000007E" error message is not the sole problem faced by XP users as they attempt to integrate Service Pack 3. There are additional error-scenarios that prevent the installation of XP SP3, all of them on top of the incompatibility issues of the release and various Microsoft software products, including the Dynamics Retail Management System, Multilingual User Interface (MUI) Pack, Remote Desktop Connection and even Windows XP Media Center Edition.

Microsoft only revealed that it was hammering away at all the issues affecting XP SP3, and that it would provide fixes in time. However, at this point in time it seems that pulling the plug on XP SP3 downloads is not an option, despite the fact that Microsoft already performed such an action when it failed to release the gold bits of the service pack on April 29 to Windows Update and the Download Center.

Windows XP SP3 RTM Build 5512 is available for download here.