XP Home's SP1 won't install correctly

I did a clean install of XP Home. It had been working very well for a year but then I messed up a lot of small things and decided to start again. I used the Transfer Wizard which worked pretty well.

First thing I did was downloaded lots of critical MS upgrades and then SP1 (express). SP1 arrives very fast to my hard drive.

Then I click install and it seems to hang forever with each progress increment. I let it continue overnight. In the morning it looked like it was installed but I could tell it wasn't.

So, I deleted everything that it had installed via ADD/Remove and I'm trying again only doing SP1 first. But I notice it still extremely unnaturally slow (two hours now and still only 3/4 installed. One window reads "Updating your System- inspecting"

Any idea what might be happening here?

Thanks, Kerry

 

Hello Kerry,

The first time you did the process backwards.

Perhaps you should start all over again. This time SP1 first, then go here http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/default.asp?corporate=true

This is the download only site. When the scan for updates occurs, the heading will be XP SP1. MS will know that SP1 is installed.

This site allows you to save the updates to a folder on your HD for you to install. Do yourself a favor and do them one at a time making System Restore points prior to each install so any one update can be "rolled back" if it proves to be a problem.

Read thru these 2 threads for a fuller explanation on how to use SR http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18288

Regards - Charles