Patch woes (constant reboot)

[Guest]

Well, it seems like a patch was downloaded automatically on Wednesday night
that has hosed my system. I come in the next morning to find a system that is
constantly reboot itself shortly after trying to boot into the OS. Running
the Repair option on the DVD gives this message:

Root cause found:
A patch is preventing the system from starting.

Also noted this in the diagnositics windows:

Repair action: System files integrity check and repair
Result: Failed. Error code = 0x2

So far I've tried the following:

1) Startup Repair - could not repair the problem

2) System Restore - This is a little quirky. Some attempts return:
System Restore failed due to an unspecified error.
Access is denied. (0x80070005)
However, I did keep going back and found a system restore that worked and
was prior to the patch, however it didn't help resolve the problem.

3) Using a command prompt I renamed the
\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download directory, thinking it might prevent
the patch from attempting to load. No effect.

4) Windows Complete PC Restore - it is a few days old, so I saved it for
last, but finally tried this one. I had been backing up the files to a
network location. I first mapped a drive to that location, but the backup
wasn't found. Then I copied the files to a USB hard drive and attached it the
system, and still got the backup not found message. Is there some secret to
getting this available to restore from? I'll try taking the USB disk and
attaching it via a IDE cable next if no other suggestion.


ANY other ideas to try here? Very frustrating - a hard drive crash I could
understand, a lightning strike happens, even me doing something to cause a
crash is understandable, but a patch I expect to be tested better than this.

 

[Guest]

Well, it seems like a patch was downloaded automatically on Wednesday night
that has hosed my system. I come in the next morning to find a system that is
constantly reboot itself shortly after trying to boot into the OS. Running
the Repair option on the DVD gives this message:

Root cause found:
A patch is preventing the system from starting.

Also noted this in the diagnositics windows:

Repair action: System files integrity check and repair
Result: Failed. Error code = 0x2

So far I've tried the following:

1) Startup Repair - could not repair the problem

2) System Restore - This is a little quirky. Some attempts return:
System Restore failed due to an unspecified error.
Access is denied. (0x80070005)
However, I did keep going back and found a system restore that worked and
was prior to the patch, however it didn't help resolve the problem.

3) Using a command prompt I renamed the
\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download directory, thinking it might prevent
the patch from attempting to load. No effect.

4) Windows Complete PC Restore - it is a few days old, so I saved it for
last, but finally tried this one. I had been backing up the files to a
network location. I first mapped a drive to that location, but the backup
wasn't found. Then I copied the files to a USB hard drive and attached it the
system, and still got the backup not found message. Is there some secret to
getting this available to restore from? I'll try taking the USB disk and
attaching it via a IDE cable next if no other suggestion.


ANY other ideas to try here? Very frustrating - a hard drive crash I could
understand, a lightning strike happens, even me doing something to cause a
crash is understandable, but a patch I expect to be tested better than this.

 

[Guest]

Sorry, meant to post that the IDE cable idea didn't do anything different.
Is there someone using an external disk that can comment on whether anything
is different about the partition or volume name?

 

[Catman]

I feel your pain.

Now on my 4th reinstall of this garbage, today I fired it up to be
greeted with the same basic issue that you have. Repair option claims
the same impressive "a patch is preventing bootup" garbage. Boy,
those MS guys are brilliant, aren't they?

I don't think I'm in the mood to reinstall this stuff once again. For
whatever reason, it doesn't appear that this particular OS is happy
with my environment (this is on a one year old ECS motherboard running
a P4 with a gig of memory and nothing exotic at all).

Was just curious if you ever found a recovery path for this rather
catastrophic failure. God help us when we get calls from the field to
go "fix this".

Thanks,

eno

 

[Don]

I feel your pain.

Now on my 4th reinstall of this garbage, today I fired it up to be
greeted with the same basic issue that you have. Repair option claims
the same impressive "a patch is preventing bootup" garbage. Boy,
those MS guys are brilliant, aren't they?

I don't think I'm in the mood to reinstall this stuff once again. For
whatever reason, it doesn't appear that this particular OS is happy
with my environment (this is on a one year old ECS motherboard running
a P4 with a gig of memory and nothing exotic at all)...

Sounds like your situation is not quite the same -- you are unable to
install even once, right? You aren't trying to recover from a
successful install which was then later screwed by Windows Update?

The only thing I can suggest is maybe check for a BIOS upgrade from ECS.