XP SP3 Unattended Installation Issue

Hi,

I've been maintaining unattended installations and sysprep images for XP Pro for the last few years and have used the SVCPACK method to install Microsoft Updates and other components like Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer 7, etc - no problems with SP2 builds. Unfortunately, with SP3, it appears that SVCPACK is not being processed during the unattended installation - nothing relevant noted in the C:\WINDOWS\setup*.* logs and no logs are being created for the updates specified in my SVCPACK.INF, even those run with an explicit /log option.

Note that i've tried using 1) a slipstreamed SP3 build and 2) the XP Pro with SP3 downloaded from Microsoft (we have a volume license agreement). Both behaved the same.

I've done some research and found some posts re: registering wups2.dll or force installing the Windows Update Agent, but the discussions are more relevant to end-user installation of SP3 after Windows has already being installed. I did however try adding the Windows Update Agent as the first item in SVCPACK.INF but had the same behaviour.

Anyone encounter this or have suggestions on how to resolve it? Given our processes, the SVCPACK method is preferred way of installing Microsoft Updates vs doing RunOnce/RunOnceEx type stuff.

Thanks.