- Aug 25, 2001
- 56,587
- 10,225
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Well, I had the unfortunate experience, of using HP (user-burned) restore CDs, to restore an old HP computer running XP Home (SP1).
I put in a fresh HDD, booted off of the first CD, and away I went. Initial restore was not painful.
But then, the trouble started. I had a SP3 CD in my toolkit, so I applied it.
I then uninstalled Norton AV 2003 that was bundled in the restore discs.
Then I went to download updates from Windows Update. Only, as soon as the Automatic Update service had started, it was taking up 99% CPU time.
I search for a solution to the problem, and came upon some MS "Fix-It" tools. I tried running it, and it said it needed Net 2.0 or higher. So I clicked on the link it showed me to download Net 3.5 SP1. Only, that was a network-based installer, and when I tried running it, it kept timing out downloading what it needed, because of the CPU time problem, it make network communication nearly impossible. So I searched for a Net runtime standalone download, and came up with a link to MS and the 4.0 version. So I installed that.
Guess what, the fix-it displayed the same error. Net 4.0 was apparently too good for the fix-it program.
So I thought that the problem might have been because of the Norton being uninstalled AFTER installing SP3, when that program wasn't written for SP3.
So I did the restore again, this time from the restore partition on the HDD, and it went much faster. So I un-installed Norton AV 2003 first.
I thought that possibly, the fact that I didn't go to Windows Update until after I installed SP3, might have screwed things up.
So I tried going to Windows Update with SP1, guess what, I got a page pointing to a KB article, probably about how SP1 was unsupported. Only, the POS IE6 wouldn't even display the page properly. In fact, it wouldn't display most pages properly. They would start to display, but then would error, and the page would disappear.
So I tried going to Firefox.com, and it loaded. Hooray. Unfortunately, instead of a download link, it said my Windows was unsupported. Boo. No way to download SP3, and no way to download a modern browser to download SP3.
Thank goodness I had SP3 on CD with me.
Why does MS leave XP users in "update limbo" like that though?
Anyways, I installed SP3, still had the same 99% CPU usage problem. But it went away when I stopped the Automatic Update service. So I downloaded Firefox, the Fix-it, clicked the link to download Net 3.5 SP1, and installed it. It said to try again what the problem was, and instead of listening to it (after it "fixed" the problem), I rebooted.
That seemed to do the trick, as I was then able to get to Windows Update and to proceed to do updates.
But what a mess, bootstrapping XP up to the newest patch level.
I put in a fresh HDD, booted off of the first CD, and away I went. Initial restore was not painful.
But then, the trouble started. I had a SP3 CD in my toolkit, so I applied it.
I then uninstalled Norton AV 2003 that was bundled in the restore discs.
Then I went to download updates from Windows Update. Only, as soon as the Automatic Update service had started, it was taking up 99% CPU time.
I search for a solution to the problem, and came upon some MS "Fix-It" tools. I tried running it, and it said it needed Net 2.0 or higher. So I clicked on the link it showed me to download Net 3.5 SP1. Only, that was a network-based installer, and when I tried running it, it kept timing out downloading what it needed, because of the CPU time problem, it make network communication nearly impossible. So I searched for a Net runtime standalone download, and came up with a link to MS and the 4.0 version. So I installed that.
Guess what, the fix-it displayed the same error. Net 4.0 was apparently too good for the fix-it program.
So I thought that the problem might have been because of the Norton being uninstalled AFTER installing SP3, when that program wasn't written for SP3.
So I did the restore again, this time from the restore partition on the HDD, and it went much faster. So I un-installed Norton AV 2003 first.
I thought that possibly, the fact that I didn't go to Windows Update until after I installed SP3, might have screwed things up.
So I tried going to Windows Update with SP1, guess what, I got a page pointing to a KB article, probably about how SP1 was unsupported. Only, the POS IE6 wouldn't even display the page properly. In fact, it wouldn't display most pages properly. They would start to display, but then would error, and the page would disappear.
So I tried going to Firefox.com, and it loaded. Hooray. Unfortunately, instead of a download link, it said my Windows was unsupported. Boo. No way to download SP3, and no way to download a modern browser to download SP3.
Thank goodness I had SP3 on CD with me.
Why does MS leave XP users in "update limbo" like that though?
Anyways, I installed SP3, still had the same 99% CPU usage problem. But it went away when I stopped the Automatic Update service. So I downloaded Firefox, the Fix-it, clicked the link to download Net 3.5 SP1, and installed it. It said to try again what the problem was, and instead of listening to it (after it "fixed" the problem), I rebooted.
That seemed to do the trick, as I was then able to get to Windows Update and to proceed to do updates.
But what a mess, bootstrapping XP up to the newest patch level.
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