You receive error messages if there is insufficient free disk space on the system drive to install the Windows XP Service Pack 3 package

When you try to install Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), you may encounter one of the following scenarios.

Scenario 1

When the files from the SP3 package are being extracted before installation, you receive the following error message:Scenario 2

When installation of the SP3 package starts, you receive the following error message:

This problem occurs if there is insufficient free space on the system drive to extract and install the Windows XP SP3 package. To install the Windows XP SP3 package, the computer must have the following amount of free disk space:

• One gigabyte (GB) of free space to make sure that the SP3 package files are extracted correctly
• Another 1 GB of free space on which to actually install the SP3 package
  
  Note This includes space to create an archive folder that can be later used to uninstall the SP3 package.

If there is insufficient free space on the system drive, you can use a USB flash drive to install the Windows XP SP3 package. If a dialog box is still displayed when you use this method, see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:Important

• Make sure that you back up your existing Windows XP installation before you perform the following procedure. When you install the Windows XP SP3 package, and you decide not to create a backup, no archive of the files is created on the system drive.
• Make sure that you back up your existing Windows installation before you perform the following procedure. Also, make sure that you test the Windows XP SP3 package on one computer before you perform a mass deployment of the package.

To use a USB flash drive to install the SP3 package, follow these steps:

1. Obtain the Windows XP SP3 package, and then copy it onto a blank removable media device such as a USB flash drive.
   
   Note Make sure that the removable media device can hold at least 2 GB of data.
2. Click Start, click Run, type cmd in the Open box, and then press ENTER.
3. Change to the USB flash directory. To do this, type the following at the command prompt, and then press ENTER:
   D:
   Note The D placeholder represents the drive letter for the USB flash drive. This flash drive may be represented by a different drive letter on your computer.
4. To create a folder that is named "SP3Files," type the following, and then press ENTER:
   MD SP3Files
5. To extract the Windows XP SP3 installation package to the SP3Files folder, type the following, and then press ENTER:
   WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.exe /extract:D:\SP3Files
6. To change to the D:\SP3Files\i386\Update folder, type the following, and then press ENTER:
   cd D:\SP3Files\i386\Update
7. To run the Windows XP SP3 installation package, type the following, and then press ENTER:
   Update.exe /nobackup
   Note The /nobackup switch enables the option to not create backup files on the system drive.

After you install the Windows XP SP3 package, keep the USB flash device that contains the Windows XP SP3 installation files, or copy the SP3Files folder to another location. You may require these installation files for the following purposes:

• So that Windows File Protection can restore a corrupted SP3 file on the system after you install the Windows XP SP3 package
• So that you can install a Windows XP feature that is not installed by default

If you copy the SP3Files folder to another location, make sure that you edit the registry so that it contains the correct location.

For more information about how to edit the location in the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Make sure that you use a version of Windows XP SP3 that matches the language version of Windows XP that is running on your computer.