Problem with Windows XP SP2

[ViperGTS]

I decided the time has come to reinstall Windows XP Pro, to clean off my machine.

The installation went fine, until I installed Service Pack 2 from a disc. It installed fully, and told me I had to reboot. So, I clicked the Restart Now button.

Upon reboot, the POST messages all went normally, but as Windows XP tried to boot (and the Windows XP splash screen, with the scrolling blue bar, came up), the splash screen started to fade in. As soon as it did, it hung, and rebooted.

This became a cycle. The computer never gets past the splash screen.

Safe mode showed the same symptoms. It rebooted half way through.

I booted from the XP disc again ansd tried to run a Windows Repair. It repaired successfully, or so I thought.

This time, Windows tried to boot again, and the splash screen stayed up a couple extra seconds, but still rebooted.

I've been battling with this for the past two days. Any thoughts? It's obviously related to SP2, but what can I do about this? Has anyone else had this problem, or heard about anyone having it?

 

[lespieds]

You don't have an e-machines do you? it sounds like something those things would do.
this problem sounds weird.
You are not leaving the CD in the CD ROM and booting are you?
That would cause problems.

 

[His Divine Shadow]

I assume the repair did not install SP2, yes? If it didn't install SP2 when repairing (i.e. the XP Pro disc was old enough to have been pre-SP2), then I can't see how SP2 would be affecting the repaired Windows. Repair is supposed to overwrite all files in the Windows directory if I remember correctly and, if it doesn't, it should still remove all SP2-modified files and replace them with clean ones, knocking SP2 out of the equation. In that case you might have a corrupted part of the hard drive. I don't know how to run Scandisk without booting into Windows (Perhaps the repair console can do it (Via the XP Pro disc)), but that might do it.

In the end, it may be time for a good 'ol fashion reformat. If you have files on the computer that you didn't back up but you want to save, you should be able to recover them using an Ubuntu Linux live CD (And all the disc images for Ubuntu act as Live CDs now when inserting and booting from them), provided the partition is intact. See: http://jclark.org/weblog/Miscellany/Tech/ubrescue.html

 

[ViperGTS]

Lol.

One of the benefits of being a field technician is some of the software that's available to me. I have a Linux-based bootable CD OS that has some HD diagnostics on it. Both HDDs are fine.

What I've done now is slipstreamed SP2 into my XP installation and created a new Installation Disc. I'm going to run that and see if it helps.

Fuck you, Microsoft.