On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 02:26:10 -0400, "Frank" wrote:
"Nehmo Sergheyev" wrote in message

This may be something I liven through myself...

I've reported about my SP2 installation failure already:
Subject: SP2 Disaster for XP here; Not solved yet.
The previous threads appear dead; I'm continuing my story here.

Briefly, I can't boot form the drive that I installed SP2 to.

How are you accessing the system, then? I'm assuming you dropped the
HD into another host PC and are running that PC's XP installation?

To remedy the problem, I tired...

A. system restore
Result: Didn't help

The SR you ran will not be able to SR a HD from another installation,
because the viewpoint will be its own and not of the OS that is not
running. This is the same issue that bedevils clearing malware under
similar circumstances, where registry clean-up is required.

Not only that, the host PCs SR may destroy whatever SR data there may
have been on the dropped-in HD.

It is now hard to tell what all is corrupted.

Yes, the repair install wasn't a good move.

I can think of two possible issues he

1) Your PC uses Prescott CPU and XP won't boot after SP2

This I have lived through. The fix I used (thanks, Cari):
- CMOS setup, disable L1 and L2 cache
- boot XP; expect it to be so slow, looks like it's hanged
- Add/Remove, uninstall SP2
- CMOS setup, enable L1 and L2 cache

But after a "repair" install, all bets are off.
See http://cquirke.mvps.org/reinst.htm

2) You have lost HD's pre-OS bootability

Suspect this if the system boots off HD via XP CD left in the drive,
but not directly. Expect to find gaps in this sequence that booting
via the XP CD will bypass:
- the relevant HD is the first HD seen, and/or
- the relevant HD is set to boot by CMOS
- MBR code is correct
- your primamry partition is set as active
- PBR code is correct, and can "see" C:\NTLDR etc.

3) NTOSKrnl is in the wrong place

By "wrong place", I mean physically on the HD. This can affect any OS
install, upgrade or SP that creates a new NTOSKrnl.exe in a position
on the physical HD that is "out of reach" for the BIOS's addressing.

Say your BIOS can only address the first 8G of the HD directly. The
boot code has to rely on this to reach NTOSKrnl.exe to load it;
thereafter XP's native HD addressing kicks in and BIOS's 8G horizon is
no longer a limit. But the new NTOSKrnl.exe is 8G away.

One way to ensure this never happens is to keep C: 8G, etc. ;-)

At this point I would write zero's to the disk and use a
slipstreamed WXP SP2 install disk to start from the gate.
Have on hand the latest chipset software and the latest
drivers for all the hardware.

If it's (1) and you haven't already FUBAR'd things, then you can
survive this. Else YMMV. The "repair" install worries me, tho.



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