Mainframeguy
Debiant by way of Ubuntu
- Joined
- 29 Aug 2002
- Messages
- 3,763
A day or two back I was given an old XP1200+ low-profile system, because it matched a 1900+ I had and thought I could use it to resolve BSODs on the 1900.
Anyway, it was reset to factory settings (both machines have XP home OEM'd onto a hidden FAT32 partition), this I think was at SP1 level. So I put AV in place and installed drivers and added dongle for my wifi and got Adaware and Spybot in place since factory setting include all this Surfairy spyware crap, and then went to get updates. At first it said to go straight to SP2, but that failed (twice) with a Red cross "Invalid data". After that I want to custom update and applied all I could find before SP2. This seemed to enable SP2 to go on via donwload, but I now find afterwards that both Explorer and IE and, incidentally DrWatson if I try to report the error are all collapsing.
Needless to say the system is less than useable. To make matters worse when I try F8 for safe mode it gives me the boot devise choice, so I am not sure which key to get to safe mode (going to try DEL now).
Anyone any ideas beyond going back to pre-SP2 and trying again? (I do not like trying the same things because I EXPECT the same result with computers!). I have tried running SFC /Scannow with no joy. I cannot get into IE to try repair there.
Remember I do not have an XP home CD, these being OEMd so I cannto get to recovery console (unless you are allowed to do that with XP Pro, I have a cd for that? But I think that's a no no).
I had a couple of niggles with SP2 - but this is an impressively bad experience! Must be something unusual, would have heard more about it if this was commonplace.
[EDIT] I really should have mentioned that even before SP2, IE right from the reset (or as received) I was getting occasional Registry file recovery dialog boxes, telling me the file had been recovered and I was clicking OK. My guess is origins of problem lie here, though I holpe SFC would fix. Anyway restoring pre-SP2 hoping to resolve and rerun SFC, this time BEFORE applying SP2 - unless anyone has better ideas out there? [/EDIT]
Anyway, it was reset to factory settings (both machines have XP home OEM'd onto a hidden FAT32 partition), this I think was at SP1 level. So I put AV in place and installed drivers and added dongle for my wifi and got Adaware and Spybot in place since factory setting include all this Surfairy spyware crap, and then went to get updates. At first it said to go straight to SP2, but that failed (twice) with a Red cross "Invalid data". After that I want to custom update and applied all I could find before SP2. This seemed to enable SP2 to go on via donwload, but I now find afterwards that both Explorer and IE and, incidentally DrWatson if I try to report the error are all collapsing.
Needless to say the system is less than useable. To make matters worse when I try F8 for safe mode it gives me the boot devise choice, so I am not sure which key to get to safe mode (going to try DEL now).
Anyone any ideas beyond going back to pre-SP2 and trying again? (I do not like trying the same things because I EXPECT the same result with computers!). I have tried running SFC /Scannow with no joy. I cannot get into IE to try repair there.
Remember I do not have an XP home CD, these being OEMd so I cannto get to recovery console (unless you are allowed to do that with XP Pro, I have a cd for that? But I think that's a no no).
I had a couple of niggles with SP2 - but this is an impressively bad experience! Must be something unusual, would have heard more about it if this was commonplace.
[EDIT] I really should have mentioned that even before SP2, IE right from the reset (or as received) I was getting occasional Registry file recovery dialog boxes, telling me the file had been recovered and I was clicking OK. My guess is origins of problem lie here, though I holpe SFC would fix. Anyway restoring pre-SP2 hoping to resolve and rerun SFC, this time BEFORE applying SP2 - unless anyone has better ideas out there? [/EDIT]