SP2 and System Restore--Just Shoot Me

[Herb Fritatta]

I've had a perfectly stable system since installing SP1. Prior to that
I had a few corrupted registry crashes that caused me to reinstall, but
SP1 took care of that, and it's been smooth sailing until...

I installed SP2 from the CD last week on this 1.1GHz Celeron Gateway. I
am not a novice, and I have religiously kept my system clean and
updated. All was well until yesterday when I had occasion to install a
(signed)driver that turned out to be older than the one I had previously
installed. Just what System Restore was meant for. The system wouldn't
start again after SR--it got into the Welcome screen and went no
further. Same result in safe mode and Last Good. So, out of ideas, I
decided to do a repair install. During the repair install (which was
from a slipstreamed retail CD)I got a message saying that XP didn't know
what to do with and executable file--the same dialog you get when you
try to open a program that has no established file association. Not
good, and the install would go no further.

Just for the hell of it, I tried the repair install from the original
retail CD, but because SP2 had been installed, it wouldn't go, saying
that I had a more recent version installed. Nowhere to go but clean
install at that point.

Of course, this meant six or seven hours of installing XP and drivers
and hardware and applications. I had a good data backup, so nothing
important was lost. I also had the MS February security update CD which
meant that I didn't have to spend additional time downloading all of the
post-SP1, pre-SP2 patches, except for two.

I will not reinstall SP2, barring some sort of forthright admission from
MS that it has the potential to f*&% up a system that is, by their
criteria, "ready." One caveat that has not been mentioned is that you
had better have a slipstreamed install CD, or you might not be able to
do a repair install. There are a few MVPs, most notably Carey Frisch,
who steadfastly maintain that SP2 installation is imminently safe on a
clean and well-patched system. Carey if full of shit. There *are* issues
that can cause disaster in sytems configured the way MS says they should be.
It turns out that we're all end-of-the-line beta testers. The patches
for SP2 will be forthcoming soon, I'm sure. To paraphrase John Belushi
in Animal House, I f*&%ed up--I trusted them.

 

[Guest]

It's your problem that you got the older driver.

 

[Herb Fritatta]

It's your problem that you got the older driver.

:

The "older" driver (signed and XP-compatible) had nothing to do with it,
you moron.

 

[kurttrail]

The "older" driver (signed and XP-compatible) had nothing to do with
it, you moron.

In the future, do the Last Good Config, and uninstalling and reinstalling
the driver, before using System Restore, which there are a lot of complaints
about post-SP2.

Since WinME deleted My Douments folder using System Restore, I have always
consider it a last resort, which I never use, because I disk image my OS
partitions fairly regularly, and I'll use that to get back to a KNOWN good
install fairly quickly.

I keep My Docs, which contain my email store files, and favorites, on a
separate harddrive from my OS partitions, and back it up to a USB 2.0
external harddrive nightly. I've learned not to trust MS to protect my
computer environment and data the hard way.

I suspect that DEP [Data Execution Prevention] had a hand in your problems.
And that is new to SP2.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/sp2mempr.mspx

--
Peace!
Kurt
Self-anointed Moderator
microscum.pubic.windowsexp.gonorrhea
http://microscum.com
"Trustworthy Computing" is only another example of an Oxymoron!
"Produkt-Aktivierung macht frei!"

 

[Guest]

The instructions say to have a full backup. I read that
as a "forthright admission" that something could go
wrong. Your mileage may vary.

As for keeping your system updated - it sounds like those
have been going well for you. I've had three critical
updates that have hosed my system. I do full backups
before those too so I wasn't harmed but they were short-
term annoyances. So far a service pack hasn't bit me but
there's no reason it couldn't.

Backup often.

 

[Herb Fritatta]

The instructions say to have a full backup. I read that
as a "forthright admission" that something could go
wrong. Your mileage may vary.

As for keeping your system updated - it sounds like those
have been going well for you. I've had three critical
updates that have hosed my system. I do full backups
before those too so I wasn't harmed but they were short-
term annoyances. So far a service pack hasn't bit me but
there's no reason it couldn't.

Backup often.

It's not and admission of anything, as MS is well aware that many users'
systems are already pretty well hosed prior to any attempt to install
SP2; the warning is universal. MS needs to say in direct and explicit
language that SP2 has the capability to cause catastrophic failure no
matter how well maintained and "ready" one's system might be. This
won't happen, of course. And mind you, I went into the install of SP2
fully cognizant that what happened would be possible, and it was *my*
decision to go ahead. Mea culpa. But what I'm concerned about is the
many, many users who are being told by the likes of Frisch and others
that SP2 is perfectly safe for well-maintained and clean systems.

 

[Herb Fritatta]

Herb Fritatta wrote:

ykli845 wrote:



The "older" driver (signed and XP-compatible) had nothing to do with
it, you moron.

In the future, do the Last Good Config, and uninstalling and reinstalling
the driver, before using System Restore, which there are a lot of complaints
about post-SP2.

Since WinME deleted My Douments folder using System Restore, I have always
consider it a last resort, which I never use, because I disk image my OS
partitions fairly regularly, and I'll use that to get back to a KNOWN good
install fairly quickly.

I keep My Docs, which contain my email store files, and favorites, on a
separate harddrive from my OS partitions, and back it up to a USB 2.0
external harddrive nightly. I've learned not to trust MS to protect my
computer environment and data the hard way.

I suspect that DEP [Data Execution Prevention] had a hand in your problems.
And that is new to SP2.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/sp2mempr.mspx

I don't know--the initial problem--failure of System Restore, probably
wouldn't be related to any DEP issues. It possible that subsequent
attempts at repair install were affected, but if so, it means that XP's
own code is at odds with DEP requirements. I doubt that too, but you
never know, I guess.

 

[Guest]

that SP2 is perfectly safe for well-maintained and clean
systems.

I agree that the phrase "perfectly safe" is an
overstatement. I wouldn't say that it's "perfectly safe"
to:

Power up a computer
Use any application
Write any program
Browse the Internet
Install anything
Make any configuration change
Get out of bed
Drive
Fly

I would use "relatively safe" for most of these (less for
driving.) Nothing man-made is perfect. Stuff happens.

 

[Al Smith]

Just for the hell of it, I tried the repair install from the original retail CD, but because SP2 had been installed, it wouldn't go, saying that I had a more recent version installed. Nowhere to go but clean install at that point.

LOL. You poor bastard. There is no end to the ways Windows XP can
screw your system. Makes me glad I haven't installed SP2.

 

[Al Smith]

In the future, do the Last Good Config, and uninstalling and reinstalling

the driver, before using System Restore, which there are a lot of complaints
about post-SP2.

Since WinME deleted My Douments folder using System Restore, I have always
consider it a last resort, which I never use, because I disk image my OS
partitions fairly regularly, and I'll use that to get back to a KNOWN good
install fairly quickly.

I keep My Docs, which contain my email store files, and favorites, on a
separate harddrive from my OS partitions, and back it up to a USB 2.0
external harddrive nightly. I've learned not to trust MS to protect my
computer environment and data the hard way.

I've come around to the opinion that, given the awkwardness of
working with NTFS if something makes the computer stop booting,
the only way to deal with XP problems is to have a drive mirror
image ready to reinstall from another hard drive. That only works
if the image files are kept up to date. There are so many ways for
XP to screw you, and leave no alternative except a reformat and
reinstall.

 

[Herb Fritatta]

I've come around to the opinion that, given the awkwardness of working
with NTFS if something makes the computer stop booting, the only way to
deal with XP problems is to have a drive mirror image ready to reinstall
from another hard drive. That only works if the image files are kept up
to date. There are so many ways for XP to screw you, and leave no
alternative except a reformat and reinstall.

I agree, especially after having to reinstall everything from scratch.
At least I did have a good data backup. In the process of reinstalling I
made a dedicated mirroring partition on a second drive. Highly recommended.

 

[Herb Fritatta]

I agree that the phrase "perfectly safe" is an
overstatement. I wouldn't say that it's "perfectly safe"
to:

Power up a computer
Use any application
Write any program
Browse the Internet
Install anything
Make any configuration change
Get out of bed
Drive
Fly

I would use "relatively safe" for most of these (less for
driving.) Nothing man-made is perfect. Stuff happens.

And of course, the phrase "perfectly safe" is a figure of speech not
intended to be taken literally. Duh.

 

[Herb Fritatta]

LOL. You poor bastard. There is no end to the ways Windows XP can screw
your system. Makes me glad I haven't installed SP2.

The problem is that MS offered to fix something (in my case, at least)
that wasn't broken. I actually do blame myself in part because I knew
that going in.

 

[Bob Davis]

I had a problem-free install of SP2 on four computers, but I would never
have attempted it without a fresh clone or image with Norton Ghost or
similar. If the SP fails, just restore with the clone and in 15 minutes I'm
back to square one.

 

[Rock]

I agree, especially after having to reinstall everything from scratch.
At least I did have a good data backup. In the process of reinstalling I
made a dedicated mirroring partition on a second drive. Highly recommended.

It's best to store the image on removable media, DVDs or external hard
drive.

 

[J. S. Pack]

I installed SP2 from the CD last week on this 1.1GHz Celeron Gateway. I
am not a novice, and I have religiously kept my system clean and
updated. All was well until yesterday when I had occasion to install a
(signed)driver that turned out to be older than the one I had previously
installed. Just what System Restore was meant for.

<snip>

Oh, you don't know that this had anything at all to do w/ SP2. Maybe the
exact same thing would have happened w/ SP1 or no SP. And as constantly
evidenced by this newsgroup, System Restore is notoriously unreliable
regardless of SP or hotfix. Nobody who knows anything about XP (and of
course most people, like yourself, don't) is gonna try to rely on System
Restore. So you've learned.

XP comes with no good backup facilities of its own. You MUST rely on
third-party solutions. The very first line of defense is the wonderful
ERUNT (free) for registry backups. In this case it would surely have been
sufficient and you'd have been up and running again in ten minutes.

Beyond ERUNT, you rely on drive imaging and data backups . . . .