Question : running  Windows XP SP3 in a script

I wanting to script SP3 for Windows XP and was wondering the best way to do this?  I have produced scripts before to run programs and map network drives but never patches.  Most of our clients are running Windows XP but we do have a couple of different operating systems so i need to just apply this script to the Windows XP machines.  My concern with running SP3 is its a big update, how do i  inform users that the update may take a long time? Any help is appreciated.  

other information that may help:
We are running Windows NT4 as the server operating system, windows XP clients

Answer : running  Windows XP SP3 in a script

No.
You need to have the batch file first check for the presence of something that didn't exists prior to the install. It could be an SP3 file name (the sp3 folder name is not unique), or you can create one. As a sample, something like the following should work. It checks for the presence of the SP3.log file which you create when run. First time the script is run it would create the log file, enter the line "SP3 Log File", then on the next line "Installed by: JDoe on Tue 1/1/2007   11:30", and then installs SP3. The second and subsequent time the script sees your SP3.log file is present and skips that part of the script.

:START
If Exist "C:\Temp\SP3.log" GoTo SKIP
If Exist "C:\Temp\" GoTo NEXT
CD\
C:
MD Temp
:NEXT
Echo SP3 Log File > "C:\Temp\SP3.log"
Echo Installed by: %USERNAME% on: %Date:~0,16%  %Time:~0,5% >> "C:\Temp\SP3.log"
\\Server1\Folder1\WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.EXE  /quiet  /warnrestart:60
:SKIP

By the way, not that it affects you here, but DOS behaves differently and some of the commands are different on different versions of windows, for example "If Exist "C:\Temp\" will work fine on XP, but if you were to do something similar on NT the Syntax is a little different.