service pack 2 wierdness

[iamnotageek]

A customer was upgrading their xp pro sp1 workstations to sp2 using sp2 on a cd borrowed from our shop. All went well until the last workstation. After installing sp2 on this machine, it blue screened with stop c0000221, unknown hard error \systemroot\system32\ntdll.dll. Same thing happens when trying to boot into safe mode, but it takes much longer to blue screen.

It had been running fine prior to this. No hardware or software changes had been made just prior to trying sp2. There is no zip drive on this machine and it does not differ in any way that I can see from the other workstations. All are the same make, model and all were purchased at the same time. All have 1.6ghz P4 w/512MB ram, same video card, NIC, etc.

Thinking that ntdll.dll had somehow become corrupted, I renamed it and copied it over from a working sp2 xp pro, but got the same results.

I uninstalled sp2 from within recovery console and got it working again, but got into the same loop after reinstalling sp2.

Took it back to the shop and tried a clean reinstall of xp pro sp1 (after manually deleting everything from the c:\windows directory) then tried sp2 install again (from a different sp2 CD) and got the same results. Before installing sp2, I had checked device manager and all was well (no bangs!) using the xp pro sp1 drivers.

I ran Hitachi's extended hard drive diags and no problems were found with the hard drive. I ran Microsoft's RAM diags in extended mode and got no failures.

Anyone seen this? Any ideas on a fix?

 

[dglienna]

Most likely, the problem can be resolved 99% of the time by fully updating the OS before applying SP2. I had a real issue not being able to get to Windows Update after SP2.

Turned out that a soundcard updated trashed things. Had to remove the device and install a new driver before things were resolved.

Luckily MS was supporting SP2 issues for free. I wonder if they still are? Took about 4 days and 3 different techs to figure it out.

-David
2006 & 2007 Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP)
2006 Dell Certified System Professional (CSP)

 

[linney]

Have you thought about Slipstreaming SP2 with the current XP CD and recreating a new Slipstreamed XP SP2 CD, and then installing that as a clean install?

Slipstream Service Packs
thread779-900263

This is handy too.

http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn/updatepack.html

Windows XP Service Pack 2 Problem Solver

http://www.michna.com/kb/WxSP2.htm

 

[allteltec]

You could also trying ghosting one of the working systems and ghosting it the problem PC. If the PC is not on a domain you could use a keyfinder to apply the correct key after ghosting.

 

[iamnotageek]

Thanks to all who responded.

dglienna - I tried a fresh install, downloaded all online updates, installed sp2 and got the same result.

linney - that's an idea, but not sure how it is functionally different than applying sp2 separately. I usually use slipstreaming for repair reinstalls to avoid subsequent os file version mismatches, but this is now a clean install. If it works, fine, but if it fails with the same error, at least I will be able to reuse the slipstreamed CD some day.

allteltec - the problem with ghosting is that there is some user data on the drive that I am trying to preserve. They are using some vertical market s/w that uses a bunch of ini files that I don't want to deal with - these are preserved when the s/w is reinstalled as long as the \program files isn't touched, so that saves some grief if I can go that way. These machines are on a domain, but I do have the xpinstall key.

 

[linney]

In your Windows folders will be the Service Pack logs which may contain information that might be helpful.
Locate the Windows XP SP2 Setup log files. The Setup program logs information about the Windows XP SP2 installation to the following log files: • Setupapi.log • Svcpack.log.


No charge support for issues related to SP2.

http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?ln=en-us&x=20&y=10&c1=509&prid=8101&gprid=273354

 

[iamnotageek]

linney - I dialed the 888-sp2-help (888-772-4357) number listed and got "the number you have dialed cannot be reached from your calling area" so I dialed the main support # and got through...

To make a long story short, Microsoft tech support worked with me long and hard, and after numerous install iterations, it was finally determined that the cause of the problem was the hard drive, by doing a fresh install on a different hard drive. The problem hard drive is a Hitachi Deskstar from Jan 2005 that passes the Hitachi extended hard disk diags without errors when run in the customer's machine.

Microsoft didn't really have a solid explanation for what was going on, but their best guess was that either the ntdll.dll file wasn't written properly to the hard drive or wasn't being read properly from the hard drive. Since I had sent them a copy of the sp2 ntdll.dll from the problem hard drive, I don't understand their ambiguity about the integrity of the sp2 file.

My guess is that there is some kind of interaction going on during xp sp2 trying to load that is not occurring during the hard drive diagnostics or during xp sp1 loading, perhaps an IDE driver issue that is exposed or triggered when going from sp1 to sp2. I will be testing this hard drive in another computer in my spare time, as we sold the customer a new hard drive and all is well...

 

[tlcscousin]

I have seen sp2 fail on several AMD based machines yet a repair install using a slipstreamed sp2 cd would succeed every time.

I also had the same issue on the a Duron 800 machine when doing service packs for windows 2000. Install the service pack and blue screen on reboot. It booted fine in safe mode and let me remove the service pack and ran fine after.

 

[iamnotageek]

In my particular case, it would get the same blue screen when booting in safe mode, so the only way I could remove sp2 was from recovery console, but this was hit or miss - sometimes the system would boot to the desktop afterwards, sometimes it wouldn't.

When I get some spare time, I plan on doing some additional experiments with this hard drive. If I can get the same problem to occur when it is in a different machine, then I will try the slipstreamed route.