What causes problems after installing Service Packs in XP?

S

Stevarian

Limp Gawd
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Jun 13, 2002
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I have a friend at work who has a system that is a few years old (it is a Dell, I believe). He has Windows XP home edition. He tried downloading the Microsoft Service Patches for it, and after they are installed, his system acts up. He can't access the internet, and in general he has several issues. He then has to do a system restore to go back to a previous working state.

I haven't had access to his computer, he is just asking me about it (I am the computer "guru" at work), but I have never had any problems with installing service packs or security patches from Microsoft, so I don't know what to tell him.

I remember there was a problem when the first service pack came out, but I thought they fixed that.

Without knowing more specifics about his system, what are some general things I can suggest to him, in the hopes of either diagnosing the problem, or getting the service pack to work. My initial thought was to just order the latest service pack from MS on cd rom, and bypass the download altogether.

Thanks a lot in advance for you help!

Steve
 
Have you tried to have him download the SP2 full install and then run it ?
Most likely it sounds like his PC is full of junk/spyware if its giving him problems
 
I will ask him, and also check to see if he has any spyware removal programs. Thanks!

Steve
 
If the computer is a Dell, i highly suggest your friend make a backup of most important data followed by a full system restore using the dell rescue disk, once the computer is at factory state, install the full sp2 for offline installations..you'll save tons of problems this way.

oldmx
 
Spyware/Viruses in the system can break things when going to SP2 as well.
 
I asked him today, and he only has Spybot on his system, and he apparently ran a full system scan a few days ago, with no problems found. I know Spybot is a 100% effective though....

Steve
 
In my (limited) experience, SP2 really can be a gamble. A friend and I, both with older computers, installed SP2 from the CD (tried the d/l, but that was a complete disaster). In both our cases; different computers, different ISP, different usage we both had the same problems with things not being compatible, other software update issues, etc. Both computers became very unstable and we both ended up uninstalling the SP2 update.

I did, as a learning experience, try doing a slipstream of my XPSP1 with SP2. Unfortunately, my older computer is now RIP, so I can't test it to see if it worked and if that would have made a difference on the older (about 5 1/2 y/o) computer.

I just bought my first retail computer yesterday - a T6528 eMachine (don't laugh, I'm really broke right now!) which comes with XPSP2 installed. I liked it -- until I started adding certain programs (spybot, spywareblaster - anything with Active X). The final straw was getting FF and trying to get flash to install on both FF and IE. That took a 2 hour phone conversation with my cable ISP to try to get it straightened out. Just opening the home page on either IE or FF caused my CPU usage to jump to 100% and everything went to super lag.

It is (knock wood) on FF, but on IE I still only get half my home page - if I get anything at all. Roadrunner's homepage is flash based and for some reason with SP2 there's all kinds of errors showing up. What ended up helping fix some of the problems was disabling the SP2 firewall. It's shoddy, not well designed for user interaction, IMHO compared to ZoneAlarm and it really messed things up big time.

If I had my druthers (which of course I do if I want to have to deal with support and compatibility issues since everything is doing everything to work with XP), I'd love to go back to 98SE. That was actually the last Windows O/S that I had absolutely no problems with. Everything just ran. No, we didn't have plugnpray, but whoopie. Give me a nice basic, (for me) stable o/s that doesn't cause continual conflicts and I'll be happy.

So, ask your friend if he's using the SP2 firewall and if he is to try disabling it and use something else. Maybe not Norton, there's apparently still some issues with SP2. At least that's what I was told tonight.
 
SP2 can kill a DSL modem connection. Ethernet / USB eitherway. Make sure he updates his connection software/Modem software if he's using any and install SP2 afterwards. If he's using a router ... welps ... dunno. GL
 
Stevarian said:
Do you know what BIOS it was that had problems?
Click to expand...

it was with a dell pc with a intel motherboard, sold it afew months ago so cant be sure, but a bios upgrade did the trick.
 
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