Stilly -

I don't find an SP3 for WinXP in anything at Microsoft. Some routine patches keep coming through, but nothing at Service Pack level. I still show SP 2 on my machines.

I haven't seen anything affecting Ad-Aware SE or any AV functions, although my Norton did recently block a malware bit who's description included "attempts to disable Anti-Malware and AV," so there's some of that apparently fairly commonly out in the wilds. Full scans done?

At Start|Settings|Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, if you check the box for "show updates" you can look for the specific Microsoft Updates that may have installed most recently. Most, but not all, will show the date installed. The description should include a "KB Number" that you can pull up at Microsoft's site to see what they did to you.

I recommend reading the KB article before you just remove an update. Most - not all - patches can be removed, if you find one that really has to be; and/or the KB article may give you an additional "quick fix" for one that causes problems with a specific program or equipment setup.

John