If you are one of those who hate the Service Pack 3 but want to play the latest games which unfortunately requires Service Pack 3. Heres how you can fake your SP 2 as SP 3 without installing it.

1)Backup your registry (how to?)

2)Run Regedit by Clicking on Start -> Run , type in regedit and press enter.

3)Browse to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ Windows"

4)Change the value of "CSDVersion" from "0x00000200" (SP2) to "0x00000300" (SP3).

5)Close Regedit.

6)Reboot.

Note- You might encounter problems if the game uses any core features of SP3.