Identical problem twice installing SP2

[Menno Hershberger]

This is more of a victory announcement than it is a call for help, but
I thought I'd post it in case someone else runs into it and thinks
they're all alone...
I've probably upgraded around 30 computers to SP2 now, pretty much
without a hitch. But two of them now have have the same identical
characteristics.
Both were infested with viruses and malware, which took a long time to
get out. The HOSTS file had been altered in both. Looked normal but if
you scrolled down about three blank pages, all the antivirus companies
were blocked. Both were running Norton Antivirus.
I cleaned them both up until Norton, AdAware, SpyBot, and Pest Patrol
all gave them a clean bill of health. Then I applied the SP2 update. In
neither case was I asked to approve the Eula... it just went ahead and
installed. In neither case did I get the screen about turning on
Automatic Updates... it just went right on into Windows.
In BOTH cases the Security Center Window came up and Automatic Updates
was turned off. Clicking on the button to turn them on yielded a message
that it was unable to turn Automatic Update on... do it manually. You
couldn't do it manually either. If you went to the Windows update site,
it yielded an error too. The error number slips me now, but it was the
same on both computers.
Security Center also showed both as having an antivirus app installed
but couldn't verify if it was up to date. I had done all the Norton
Updates which should have taken care of that.
After about a day I finally found a cure for the Windows Update
problem... a batch file that re-registers a whole bunch of *.dll files.
Updates turned on and I was able to get updates from the Windows Update
site. It worked on both machines.
On both machines I uninstalled Norton and reinstalled it. Both had NAV
2004. That took care of the antivirus warning and all seems to be well on
both machines.
I was thinking maybe I should have applied the service pack *before* I
did the massive cleanup, but I imagine whatever damage was done was
already done. I know excessive cleaning can cripple things also. In these
two cases Winsock wasn't damaged as it is sometimes by cleanup
operations.
The owner of the first machine tells me that he has received one
automatic update since he got it back which installed without a hitch. An
update (the same one probably) came in on the second one while I was
still working on it.
If anyone else experiences this problem and gets hung on it, I'd be
glad to post the batch file (or a link to it if I can find it) that
performed the miracle on the update problem.

 

[Rock]

Menno Hershberger wrote:

I was thinking maybe I should have applied the service pack *before* I
did the massive cleanup, but I imagine whatever damage was done was
already done. I know excessive cleaning can cripple things also. In these
two cases Winsock wasn't damaged as it is sometimes by cleanup
operations.

<snip>

No, the way you did was the only way. Clean it first. SP2 needs a good
running system for it to upgrade properly.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I was thinking maybe I should have applied the service pack *before* I
did the massive cleanup, but I imagine whatever damage was done was
already done. I know excessive cleaning can cripple things also. In these
two cases Winsock wasn't damaged as it is sometimes by cleanup
operations.

I think that if a machine is in such a bad state then trying to install
a Service Pack is liable to fall into serious trouble, and the less
clean up done the worse it will be. In such a case it is really best to
grit teeth, backup data, use Files and Settings transfer (with care) and
go a complete format and reinstall. Then install SP2 as first action
after that - without having gone on the net at all (defer activation)