Win XP Pro SP2 Failure / System won't repair

[Markus]

Hi Everyone,

I thought I would be proactive and apply SP2 to my Win XP Pro SP1'ed
system last night, boy what a nightmare.

I downloaded the file, then ran it; it unpacked it's files to a folder
off the root of my c:\ and then started to do it's processes. It would
hand where it said it was finishing it's processes after
installation--it'd sit for 35 minutes or more on that with no cpu or
harddrive activity. I figure, I must have left something running, it
didn't like, so I go into task manager, make sure all apps (instant
messaging, etc) are not open. Still just hung there. So, I finally
use task manager to stop the install, then I run it again. Same
thing, it gets to the 'finalizing install' and sits there. I let it
set, no change. So, maybe not the smartest thing, but at this point
it doesn't seem to be working, so I start a shut down to warm boot the
machine.

After the bios and when windows starts up, it can tell the SP install
fails and starts to remove the SP. After it finishes, it needs to
reboot. When it reboots, I get the black windows marquee screen with
the incrementing status bar (that I normally see when windows is
loading) it flickers like it's going to display the logon screen, and
then I hear the drives spin up, then the system warm boots. It will
continue this process forever.

So, I figure I've damaged a system file, so I'll do a repair from the
XP Pro install cd; during the install/repair, I get to where it asks
me if the machine is going to be part of a domain or a workgroup; I
mark to join it to the domain, put in user name and password for acct
that can add machines to domain, and it just sits there. Forever. If
I reboot it, it goes through the install/repair process again and asks
to join to domain or workgroup; this time I select workgroup, and
shortly afterwards I see a com+ related error due to a DLL issue (I
don't have the exact error here with me at work), but the install
continues and finishes. It goes to boot up, and shortly afterwords,
it gets a blue screen with a stop message (which I don't have with me
here at work).

I think that SP2 has changed some of the files in the windows
directories (obviously), so much so that when I do a repair (since
it's replacing some system files and not all), the file it wants are
now the SP2 version, and my original 2002 version of XP doesn't
install/repair correctly, so boom.

So, is my last option before a fresh install over the top of my
current install, a SP2 slip streamed XP Pro CD to repair/install from?

 

[GreyTop]

I couldn't do a repair either.
All went well un till the final boot and then it would not boot at
all.
Luck would have it I had a current backup to get me up and running. I
have a problem some web sites java was the reason for the repair.

 

[Markus]

Well, 2 days later, my system is back up and running, and is SP2
patched. I thought the key to it all would be the SP2 slip streamed
cd; but after applying it, the same symptoms--the box just sat their
and seemed to warm boot continuously after flashing the manufacturer's
logo/bios screen, and flickering a bit. A friend recommended that
while it was flickering, to hit f8, which to my surprise brought up
the windows safe mode menu options. I didn't even realize I was
getting this far. So, I tried safe mode, and it prompted me that it
was having a problem with d346bus.sys and that I could press esc to
cancel it, which of course led the machine to warm boot itself again.
So, I did some searching on the web, and found that others in XP in
general were/had this problem, and their suggestion was to rename the
two files (both d346bus.sys and d346prt.sys are in the
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS folder) from the repair console (I used ERD
commander instead) and then booted into the SP2 slip streamed CD, and
selected to install, then let it detect the current install and do a
'repair'. 39 minutes later, all is well.

Good times, good times. Glad I was able to salvage it, wasn't looking
forward to reinstalling all my apps!