SP2 problems

[guarantee]

Hello,
My girlfriend and I, two non computer savvy people, have embarked on a
journey to rebuild the POS that we use for our computer needs. It's an old
Gateway Solo 9550 with windows xp pro. 30 gig hard drive. 512m ram. Sitting
in a dock with keyboard and monitor hooked up because the built in screen
died about a year ago.
So we started with a wipe and a reinstall of windows, not exactly painless
but we have learned a few things. As we seem to have misplaced the norton
systems product key, and the contract was almost up we went in search of
other options. Finding the security options in SP2 to be of some value we
decided to go for the upgrade. After the download and before installation,
it seemed to get stuck. So, for better or worse, I hit the cancel button,
killed explorer and tried again. Worked fine. Completed installation and
went for the reboot. Here's where our lack of computer skills kicks in I
believe. First reboot we get a black screen with nothing but the mouse
arrow. "F" buttons and Ctrl, alt, Dlt not working. Give it the old hard
reboot - turn it off and back on. Background of desktop shows up with
nothing on it. No start menu, no trash can, nothing. Right click on the
mouse on the desktop works, but can't access Properties. Try hard reset two
more times. Same outcome. Restart in Safe Mode and reboot to previous save
point.

I had been to Microsoft Update recently and may have downloaded one of the
new security programs and since I hadn't done any configuration with it
didn't think about it before downloading SP2. This is my possible
explanation...anyone have something better before I try again?

Thanks,
G

 

[Xandros]

You didn't mention whether or not you installed the drivers for your
computer's hardware after the initial setup and before install SP2. You
might want to try that
http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/Solo_Series/p9550/P9550nv.shtml

 

[guarantee]

Are you pointing to the general drivers or to the updated BIOS? The
gateway's come with a 3 disk loading sequence for windows, including drivers,
operating system, and programs disk. XP ran fine once it finally loaded. We
thought it had hung up and went to bed, but in the morning is was about half
through loading windows, that is about 8 hours later. So we know something
is messed up, but were hoping it was something to do with either the disks we
were using or the CD drive.