SP2 f***-up. "System state" my saviour ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jethro
  • Start date Start date
J

Jethro

Hi all,

tried installing SP2 last night. Spent 2 hours at the "Finshing
installation" message. Eventually I figured it had hung, and (reluctantly)
rebooted machine. When it restarted I got a message saying SP2 setup hadn't
completed, and to uninstall it. I did this, it fnished uninstalling then
asked to restart.

On restart - ouch ! BSOD.

Tried "Last known ..." - ouch ! BSOD.

Tried "Safe mode" - ouch ! BSOD.

Tried booting from XP CD and "Repair windows" (I didn't make a floppy set of
ASR disks). Restarted system as prompted - ouch ! BSOD.

I have resigned myself to reinstallling fresh XP. Any data I want will still
be on the drive when I've done, the biggest pain is reinstalling all the
software (Office, Visual Studio 6 + .NET etc etc).

Before I started the process, I did a "Backup system state".

If I reinstall, and restore system state, what can I expect ? Will all the
user accounts and installed software be recovered ? Or am I being a bit
hopeful ?

Or does anyone have any suggestions about what might be causing the BSOD ?

Many thanks in advance
 
....been there, done that !
....it's a bit late in the day for you but, did you have a good read at
microsoft.com about the preparations you need to make for SP2 ?
.... http://www.theeldergeek.com has some good advice on SP2

regards, Richard
 
RJK said:
...been there, done that !
...it's a bit late in the day for you but, did you have a good read at
microsoft.com about the preparations you need to make for SP2 ?
... http://www.theeldergeek.com has some good advice on SP2

regards, Richard
Click to expand...

OK, so no I didn't. However, is re-installing XP and then restoring system
state going to help me ? The system state was 2220 files and 380 Mb

regards
 
Jethro said:
OK, so no I didn't. However, is re-installing XP and then restoring
system state going to help me ? The system state was 2220 files and
380 Mb

regards
Click to expand...

If you do a fresh install (instead of a Repair Install, which it seems
you already tried), then everything will be gone. You need to rescue
your data first. If a user installs SP2 without doing the prep work
(making sure the machine is 100% malware-free, among other things),
there is a very high probability the upgrade will fail. Now your system
is in a damaged state.

Here are links to information about the different types of installs:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm - Repair Install
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html - Clean Install

There are various ways to rescue the data. If you need help with that,
post back and include a description of your computer.

Malke
 
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