Serious performance & stability degradation following updates

[Ron]

On Feb 17 I updated my W2K-SP2 P4-1.8 512MB 120GB machine
to SP4. I also did these updates:
Feb 11 2004 Security Update for Windows 2000 (KB828028)
Feb 11 2004 Critical Update for Windows Media Script
Commands (KB828026).

Downloaded & installed MSN Messenger 6.1.

Everything was completed without incident.
I've always accepted and installed all security updates
when they're offered.

I only used Messenger once, and turned if off after a few
days because I don't have time for the pop-ups and screen-
litter.

Now, a few days later, I'm noting that when I start up my
machine, there is some unusual 'background' disk activity
and a constant CPU load of about 22%. Latency when
opening any programs is about 5 seconds (previously nil).
And I have had numerous lock-ups when opening Windows
Explorer. Download performance is significantly lower and
the machine seems preoccupied. I'm virus-free (up-to-date
Fix-It 4.0) and adware-free (up-to-date Ad-aware6). I
can't find anything abnormal using the Task Manager (no
abnormal runaways or suspicious processes). I've run a
full hardware diagnostic on my system using the BIOS tools
and Ontrack Fix-It Utilities. Nothing abnormal found.

I haven't downloaded or installed anything else, and my
machine was functioning flawlessly for months before I
made these updates. Has anyone else noticed this sort of
problem?

 

[Larry]

Yes, I experienced the same problem. SP4 practically shut
down one computer of mine completely. I had to go into
Add/Remove programs and uninstall it. Now it's working
fine. I believe (though I haven't tested it) that you
can't have both SP1 & SP4 at the same time.

 

[Scott]

Might check under services - Indexing Service. Likely isn't needed for
a non-server environment and can be turned off.

Scott