B
Bob
To make a long story short, an acquaintance of my wife asked for my help
with their Dell desktop running XP Home SP1.
From what I could figure out after talking with them and examining the
system, the auto-installation of SP2 on their malware infested machine
resulted in all users losing their desktop, task bar, everything. When any
user logged in, they were rewarded with an empty window and no way to do
anything.
An attempt to use the Dell XP Home CD to do a Windows Repair resulted in
the repair getting to the Installing Drivers section with 34 minutes
remaining followed by repeated error message boxes saying that the file
"rundll32.exe" could not be found.
I rebooted the machine and decided to do a re-install from scratch. At the
appropriate point in the installation process, I deleted, re-created, quick
formatted the C: partition, and instructed Setup to install Windows in the
newly recreated C: partition.
During the Installing Drivers phase with 34 minutes remaining, the
installation appeared to hang. There was no disk I/O and the progress bar
failed to show any further progress. Leaving the system alone overnight, we
came back to find the machine in the same state.
I don't suspect a hardware problem, but I guess I will run the Dell
hardware diagnostics to see if it detects any hardware problems. There have
not been any hardware changes since the system was purchased and they
didn't have any apparent problems until SP2 auto-installed on the system.
It's a plain vanilla bottom of the line Dell desktop with 256MB RAM and I
suspect a Celeron CPU with the audio and video integrated onto the
motherboard. Other than the normal keyboard, mouse, monitor, and speakers,
the only other external device connected to the system is an HP printer
that came with the system.
I'm pretty much stumped with what to do next and would appreciate any help
I can get.
Thanks,
Bob
with their Dell desktop running XP Home SP1.
From what I could figure out after talking with them and examining the
system, the auto-installation of SP2 on their malware infested machine
resulted in all users losing their desktop, task bar, everything. When any
user logged in, they were rewarded with an empty window and no way to do
anything.
An attempt to use the Dell XP Home CD to do a Windows Repair resulted in
the repair getting to the Installing Drivers section with 34 minutes
remaining followed by repeated error message boxes saying that the file
"rundll32.exe" could not be found.
I rebooted the machine and decided to do a re-install from scratch. At the
appropriate point in the installation process, I deleted, re-created, quick
formatted the C: partition, and instructed Setup to install Windows in the
newly recreated C: partition.
During the Installing Drivers phase with 34 minutes remaining, the
installation appeared to hang. There was no disk I/O and the progress bar
failed to show any further progress. Leaving the system alone overnight, we
came back to find the machine in the same state.
I don't suspect a hardware problem, but I guess I will run the Dell
hardware diagnostics to see if it detects any hardware problems. There have
not been any hardware changes since the system was purchased and they
didn't have any apparent problems until SP2 auto-installed on the system.
It's a plain vanilla bottom of the line Dell desktop with 256MB RAM and I
suspect a Celeron CPU with the audio and video integrated onto the
motherboard. Other than the normal keyboard, mouse, monitor, and speakers,
the only other external device connected to the system is an HP printer
that came with the system.
I'm pretty much stumped with what to do next and would appreciate any help
I can get.
Thanks,
Bob