sp2 makes my PC unbootable

[michael]

I had a SP2 working fine for months, and recently a power outage (UPS didn't
function)
made my PC shut down & show the error message "Unmountable Boot Drive".
I reformated the hard drives and reinstalled XP.
XP was successfully reinstalled and working normally.

When I updated to SP2 using Windows Update and restarted the system,
the initial bios screen showed up until the system started to seek drives,
and then it became blank (black screen) with no error message or anything,
and CTRL + ALT + DEL didn't work.

A friend of mine suggested to disable DEP (I'm running Athlon 64),
but I'm not sure if that helps, since my SP2 was working fine for months
with the exactly same configurations (same drivers, bios, etc.).

Here's my system:

- Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI motherboard
- Athlon 64 4000+ 2.41GHz
- XFX 6800GT PCI-E 256 DDR3 graphic card
- 2 of Hitachi Deskstar 80GB SATA-II hard drives on RAID 0 (NVidia on-board
RAID)


Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Thank you

 

[Alias]

I had a SP2 working fine for months, and recently a power outage (UPS didn't
function)
made my PC shut down & show the error message "Unmountable Boot Drive".
I reformated the hard drives and reinstalled XP.
XP was successfully reinstalled and working normally.

When I updated to SP2 using Windows Update and restarted the system,
the initial bios screen showed up until the system started to seek drives,
and then it became blank (black screen) with no error message or anything,
and CTRL + ALT + DEL didn't work.

A friend of mine suggested to disable DEP (I'm running Athlon 64),
but I'm not sure if that helps, since my SP2 was working fine for months
with the exactly same configurations (same drivers, bios, etc.).

Here's my system:

- Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI motherboard
- Athlon 64 4000+ 2.41GHz
- XFX 6800GT PCI-E 256 DDR3 graphic card
- 2 of Hitachi Deskstar 80GB SATA-II hard drives on RAID 0 (NVidia on-board
RAID)


Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Thank you

Did you install SP2 immediately after XP? Did you do a clean
up/chkdsk/defrag after installing XP and XP2? Did you have your anti
virus running when you installed SP2? Did you have any peripherals like
a camera, scanner or printer hooked up when you installed SP2?

Alias

 

[Guest]

to resolve the issue first uninstall SP2, follow the steps in the below link:

http://win-xp-sp.blogspot.com/2004/08/uninstalling-windows-xp-sp-2-using.html

Raj

 

[Kerry Brown]

I had a SP2 working fine for months, and recently a power outage (UPS
didn't function)
made my PC shut down & show the error message "Unmountable Boot
Drive". I reformated the hard drives and reinstalled XP.
XP was successfully reinstalled and working normally.

When I updated to SP2 using Windows Update and restarted the system,
the initial bios screen showed up until the system started to seek
drives, and then it became blank (black screen) with no error message
or anything, and CTRL + ALT + DEL didn't work.

A friend of mine suggested to disable DEP (I'm running Athlon 64),
but I'm not sure if that helps, since my SP2 was working fine for
months with the exactly same configurations (same drivers, bios,
etc.).
Here's my system:

- Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI motherboard
- Athlon 64 4000+ 2.41GHz
- XFX 6800GT PCI-E 256 DDR3 graphic card
- 2 of Hitachi Deskstar 80GB SATA-II hard drives on RAID 0 (NVidia
on-board RAID)


Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Thank you

Did you connect to the Internet without a firewall in place? This could be a
software firewall or a router for a broadband connection. If you connect to
the Internet with a pre SP2 version of Windows without a firewall or router
in place you will be infected by one or more worms within minutes if not
seconds. This is probably why the SP2 install failed. You should not connect
for any reason even to get Windows updates. Do not have your phone line or
network cable plugged in to your computer while installing Windows. Before
reinstalling Windows go to the following link and download SP2.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...BE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displaylang=en

Burn it to a CD. Backup your data. Perform a clean install of XP making sure
to delete and recreate the Windows system partition. Install Windows.
Install SP2 from the CD you burned. Now you can connect to the Internet to
get Windows updates, driver updates or whatever. Once Windows and your
programs are reinstalled then you can restore your data from the backup.

Kerry

 

[michael]

Thank you Kelly.

I never thought about that.
I didn't use firewall when I used Windows Update,
though I use a router to share the internet among
ohter PCs.
Next time, I will install Anti Virus & firewall and
use the SP2 CD instead of Windows Update.
Thank you

michael

 

[michael]

Thank you Alias,

I actually tried Check Disk in XP before upgrading,
and it failed to complete.
Could it be the reason?
I thought the failure is due to my RAID 0 config.
Should I run CHKDSK from Recovery Console instead?
(chkdsk /r & chkdsk /p)
Thank you for your input.

michael

 

[michael]

Thank you Raj,

This is a concise troubleshooting guide.
It's very helpful.
Thank you

michael

 

[Kerry Brown]

Thank you Kelly.

I never thought about that.
I didn't use firewall when I used Windows Update,
though I use a router to share the internet among
ohter PCs.
Next time, I will install Anti Virus & firewall and
use the SP2 CD instead of Windows Update.
Thank you

michael

Your welcome. If you had a router then a worm/malware is probably not the
problem.

Kerry