Laptop won't boot following XP SP3 install

Factual Questions
1

My windows XP laptop won’t boot. I just installed SP3 this morning, and it seemed to install OK. I think this is after the first reboot after installing it. That is, I think I chose “reboot” later, and it failed the next time I rebooted. It complains about shell32.dll, then powers off and restarts. The complaint is something about (I’m probably getting the wording wrong) a header checksum failing.

When Windows first begins to start, I have the choice of something like “Profile 1” and “Profile (backup)”, but both fail the same way.

I have the Bart PE windows XP boot disk on CD. Booting with that, if I do a chkdsk, it finds four problems. I ran chkdsk as read only, so I haven’t tried to fix the file disk yet.

Looking at C:\windows\system32\shell32.dll, it’s dated april 2008, about the time SP3 was released. Another (desktop) XP computer has April 2004 for that file.

So what should I try? let chkdsk fix the disk? Rename the new shell32.dll, and copy the old one to the folder? Both? Find the older shell32.dll that was on the laptop (how?) and use that? Find another copy of the newer shell32.dll (how?) and use that? If I get my laptop working with an older shell32.dll, should I then find the newer version, and copy it over?

Would it be worth trying to rename the existing new shell32.dll, and then copy it to the same folder with the name shell32.dll? Or would the copy just likely fail with the same checksum problem?

There may be multiple corrupted files, but I’m hoping only up to four.

The laptop is 3 or 4 years old. It has a dual boot to Ubuntu Linux that can see the C: drive, but no internet capability without Windows working. I have the Bart PE boot disk, because I used that to replace my hard drive about 6 months ago. I think I still have the backup files for that, and could reinstall that backup, as a last resort. I can get to the internet on a Vista desktop, and that PC has a CD burner that I could use to copy files over to the laptop.

2

I renamed the SP3 shell32.dll, and copied over the older shell32.dll, and my laptop was able to boot with no apparent problems. So should I not worry about it? Should I try to get another copy of the SP3 shell32.dll?

3

Poking around, I found a copy of the new shell32.dll in C:\windows\ServicePackFiles\i386. I noticed that when I held the mouse over that copy, I got a lot of information about the file, but when I held the mouse over the copy that didn’t work, it just had date and size. So I rebooted with the windows boot disk, and copied the good version into C:\windows\system32, and everything seems to be working alright, now.

4

Thanks for keeping us up to date. It may help some other person burned by SP3

5

Agreed. Bookmarked, with hardcopy stuffed into my ubcd4win CD sleeve.

SP3 upgrade will be inflicted on my laptop on Monday.

6

To be fair, I don’t think this was an SP3 problem per se. The file that was first unpacked onto my hard drive was good, it was (IMHO) when it was copied into the windows\system32 directory that the corruption happened. These things rarely happen, but they do happen.

But yeah, make an emergency boot disk if you don’t have one yet, just in case.

7

I can’t be of much help to you, but the mention of SP3 caught my attention. I downloaded what claimed to be SP3 Friday, and it was as if I had opened the gates to hell. I spent most of the day and night trying to undo the damage.

I have had some problems with Antivirus XP 2008 recently ( a virus claiming to be an antivirus tool) and had cleaned up all but the parts I couldn’t remove. The only thing holding it back was the fact that I had unchecked its files in the startup folder of the system configuration.

Something about SP3 screwed up the list of programs in the startup menu, and unleashed the beast. Now, everything that once was in the startup folder is gone, and replaced with other stuff, some with Asian characters I cant read.

I spent the day running ad aware, spybot, trend micro online virus scan, & kaspersky - killing viruses and manually deleting the rest of the infected files. I unchecked everything in the startup menu and the computer is running fine now. But I have no idea how to get the startup menu back to normal again.

I have seen others online questioning the validity of Service Pack 3. I am staying the hell away from it.

In my case, it could have been antivirus xp 2008 parading as SP3, cause it does that kind of stuff. It will disguise its self as other trusted programs. When you try to eradicate it, it somehow has outguessed your every move. Task manager is disabled, and none of the virus removal tools will load or function.

Like I said, I can’t help. I know nothing about this stuff and depend on my programs and the advise of others to take care of these problems when they arise. But check your startup folder and see if it looks right.

8

I got SP3 straightened out on my computer only after several days of futzing around.
I downloaded Microsoft’s service pack blocking tool for my mom’s computer only after SP3 had installed on there and caused nothing but trouble. I had to do a system restore and get rid of it. Trouble is…I can’t tell if the blocker actually works.