SP3 install slow or dead?

As I had to reinstall windows xp following an irreparable system crash I thought I would bite the bullet and install SP3. It has been going all night, but apparently working, and now I have been at the "cleaning in progress" stage for over 3 hours. Hard disk light flashes from time to time. I am rather worried about aborting the whole thing as I do not want to have to reinstall yet again.

Any advice please?

David

 

Hi re your statement : It has been going all night, but apparently working, and now I have been at the "cleaning in progress" stage for over 3 hours.

Do you mean the sp3 installation was running all night ?

 

i think you can safely say that the installation is corrupted - I was not going to install sp3 on my offline computer but I was curious as to how long it might take having just bought it ( low cost 2 x cpu evaluation)
took 25 minutes including 2 reboots because of a glitch at restart (20 minutes for the update using a Microsoft sp3 cd disk)
cpu speed = 1GHZ

I would suggest booting your system with a linux live installation disk as this will confirm that all hardware devices, sub-systems and components minus hdd are working and so is most likely a software related issue
If using Ubuntu you can run the bundled ram memory tester - memory on a module might still work up to the individual chip that is faulty , so in theory if a module is faulty you might be trying to run Windows with say 32MB total usable memory
just a thought

Once the mainboard and memory is confirmed ok with reasonable confidence then maybe erase the disk and reinstall the native Windows version , confirm no issues, then update the Windows installer to v4.5, update the mainboard chipset and system device related drivers, Windows update , then try installing sp3

 

Thanks. Until I aborted the installation was running for the better part of 16 hours!

David

 

well , at least nothing wrong with the heat sink fans !!!

I hope you keep this post thread updated as is interesting

Did you use the original or vendor supplied replacement oem restore/recovery set cd's to reinstall XP windows ? , if not , as is common, this could be a contributing factor because sp3 revalidates the license, so if you were online at the time during the sp3 installation ....

 

David, for clarification:
1. Are you running XP Home or Pro?
2. Did the system work OK after the install?
3. Did you download SP3 and save to Desktop?
4. Did you shut down ALL Anti-Virus and Spyware?
5. Did you disconnect from the internet?

I'm asking because I have done this on 4 home comps running XP Home and had no problems with the install. Neil.

 

1. XP Pro
2. Yes
3. No download. Installed from windows update prompt (stupidly?)
4. No I kept them both running
5. Internet connection not disconnected

I used vendor software recovery cd's to get my system back.

However after the aborted update my system worked fine on SP2 (at least!).

Dave

 

Hi , i suggest try to install sp3 again but this time uninstall all security suites, so upgrade offline

I suggest install the latest Windows installer program
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...6F-60B6-4412-95B9-54D056D6F9F4&displaylang=en

then the chipset driver from the computer support site

load the Windows sp2 disk and install netframework 1.1 and 1.1 sp1
(just a precaution)

download the sp3 distributable
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...A8-5E76-401F-BE08-1E1555D4F3D4&displaylang=en

download security suite setup files or have disks ready

go offline

run the installer program, chipset driver update, restart, then sp3 , restart a few times
reinstall security suites
go online to and run windows update to allow revalidation