Cannot boot XP since installing new critical security updates

[SteveGill]

Over the weekend I applied the new XP home critical
security update with no problems including an enforced
restart.

Yesterday was the first full boot of the laptop after the
update. At the end of the day there appeared to be
problems with the shutdown process - a couple of processes
had to be closed down to permit shutdown.

This morning the laptop will not boot up: standard or last
good boots simply end up with the WinXP logo and the
little processing bar going mad; safe mode boots get to
btkrnl.sys and stop. In both cases the disk access light
is on full-time.

One thing that is noticeable is how slow everything is -
almost looks like a problem with disk access.

 

[stevegill]

Managed to boot up in one of the special safe modes (disk
logging?) - received a message that the system couldn't
resolve the file type on the hard drive then it decided it
was ntfs and went on happily.