Installing final XP3 onto my XP2 Home Edition PC Question?.

My main PC is my Win7 desktop PC on which I am writing this. My question regards an old PC I had stored and unused for the last few years and which I have recently installed in my workshop. I had the original Windows XP Home Edition SP2 disc and I used it to reinstall the OS just to see if it was all working. Anyway to cut a long story short it was fine and now I have it working and connected to my home network.

Problem as you probably know is that as Windows XP has been unsupported since 2014 I cannot just update to SP3 from Microsoft anymore. What I did do though was download a copy of the final updates edition of SP3 to my Win7 downloads folder. I found an article online on creating a bootable (slipstream) disc from my original SP2 disc and the final SP3 file but this I believe would mean a complete reinstall of the OS and if possible I would like to avoid that in order to retain my files/installed programs etc. Is it possible to create a bootable disc just from the final SP3 file which I downloaded, and use that to update the existing install of XP SP2 or is there another way to do this?.

AddRAM said:

No you don`t have to do that, just do some digging with google and you`ll find SP3, trust me it`s out there :)

But if you ever decided to reinstall, here`s a link to XP Home SP3

Windows XP Home Edition SP3 Free Download

Thanks very much for the reply. I think the file (windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-debug-enu) which I have on my hard drive after downloading it yesterday is the file you mean but not 100% sure. Is the file in the link you gave above, a complete copy of WinXP up to and including SP3 and can I run it from that link into my Win XP Home PC or do I have to burn it to a disc first?. Excuse my ignorance but I am a pensioner and didn't grow up with computers. I would ideally like to find just the SP3 package and a way to update my PC from SP2 but am not sure if I can do that so maybe I will have to reinstall the lot?. If it helps I have a burning program called ImgBurn which I used to create an ISO file of something a long time ago, just forgotten how to use it now and lost the wlkthrough.

Thanks very much but there were no installation instructions. Do I just install it as a regular install or do I need to burn it to a disc?. Sorry for being such a pest, I just like to be sure I am not making a wrong move.

Thanks for all the help guys. Problem has now been resolved and PC updated to Win XP SP3.