I think I totally hosed my computer.

[ZenLefty]

Hi everyone.

I'm logging in from work. All I get from my home computer is the Blue Screen of Death. Short version: I installed Service Pack 4 and now I can't get it to reboot.

My system: Pentium 4 with loads of memory; Windows 2000 Professional.

It all started when I picked up a copy of Thief III. But I couldn't play it until I updated my graphics card. So I went out and bought a nice Radeon 9600 - not top of the line but I wasn't willing to shell out $300 for this upgrade. On the box it said it came with a free copy of Half Life 2. O, joy. Of course, unbeknownst to me, HL2 wasn't yet released. So, like everyone else, I waited.

That was July. Now, HL2 is out and I could go to their website and download my free copy. Life is good, eh? But to download it, I have to create an account with Steam. That's too nice a name. Let's call it Smog. What Smog does is collects some personal information, and gives me the option of downloading a number of their popular games. Most of them I'd have to pay for, but HL2 is mine and it's free. It took a few steps to get there, many of which are not correctly outlined on the instructions, but I got there.

Cool. Now download HL2?

No. I can't. My Jurassic graphics card drivers are outdated. Shit, they're from four whole months ago!! What was I expecting? Go to the ATI website, carefully select the correct driver upgrade for my system, and download that. But they warn that Windows won't be able to run that unless I install a special utility from microsoft. Thoughtfully, they provided a link. Go download this special utility, but they warn that I can't run it until I install Service Pack 4. I check my computer's properties and I'm only on Service Pack 3. (In hindsight, this should have raised a shrill alarum - service pack notices come to me automatically and I should have wondered how I missed one.)

Okay. Go to Microsoft. Get Service Pack 4. Carefully select the correct one for my system. Downloading and installing it took a while even on a cable modem, giving me enough time to repaint the living room if I wanted. Reboot to proceed? Yeah, sure.

Won't reboot. Unexpected kernel error. And I don't think it means a piece of popcorn fell on the motherboard. Won't reboot in safe mode. Won't reboot from last previous good configuration. Won't reboot in DOS mode. It's hosed. Somewhere out there, bill gates is laughing 'till he wets his pants.

Either I downloaded the wrong service pack (probably), or it's conflicting with something I had and it won't run right. I think I'm looking at a Total System Fuckup. I can wipe out the disk and reinstall everything, but I hope I don't have to. And I'd like to somehow retrieve some of the personal files I have saved on there. That would be nice.

Any thoughts?

[CBGLuthier]

1. There is one thing you can do to save personal files

If you can not resolve this short of a reinstall.

Buy a new hard drive and reinstall on that. Make your old drive the secondary drive and then you can copy all of your files back from it.

[trotsky]

2. Here's something to try.

Hopefully you still have the Windows 2000 CD that was used to install the system. Boot with that in the CD drive and you will have a Recovery option. Use it to recover/reinstall Windows, because at this point you can't do any further harm. That may make things bootable again, but it will also put all the system files back to their original versions, so you should really try to apply Service Pack 4 again, and then go out to Windows Update and download all the critical patches.

[Kellanved]

3. Use the Recovery Console

(boot from your 2k CD. Enter Repair mode ('R') and start the Recovery Console.)

There should be a "spuninst.bat" file in the (C:\winnt\)$NtServicePackUninstall$ folder, running it will remove SP4.

(you'll need to remove it once more, once the system is running again via the real "remove" option).


Should this fail, try a repair installation of W2k.