Kind of a strange place to post this. Why not go to Microsoft instead, or a tech site. If your really stuck, try a system restore.
I can't help...but here's a
bump for publicity
You can do a system restore from safe mode. That will get you back to the point before you installed SP2.
Uh Oh.....
:)
Wish I had some advice, but I'm a bit computer illiterate. Money says you will have plenty of advice very, very soon.
Boot from the XP disc and selct the repair option.
Spotty hard drive? Try slaving the HD on another machine.
ritewingwarrior has a point...
As you obviously are getting on the net...use Google as your friend.
I usually can find needed info at MSWindows site (as convoluted as
their texts may be) or get solutions from tech blogs (while keeping up
my radar for bogus/malicious offers of assistance).
Bood luck!
If yoru disk activity ceases you may actually have a hardware problem rather than an OS problem.
I'm pretty sure you can get to safe mode by tapping F8 during bootup. Then you might actually be able to restore successfully.
You'll get your best support in a newsgroup. That's where all the real geeks are.
bttt
If it's a HDD issue, you'll have to slave it on another machine and extract the data you need. If it's a Windows issue, your best bet is to boot from the XP OS CD and use the repair option. When you get to the DOS screen, run a chkdsk /f and see what you get.
I've had machines blow up and a simple chkdsk with the /f switch will make it all better.
After you get into the GUI, run scandisk and defrag and scan the hell out of the HDD with a virus scanner (I still use AVG http://free.grisoft.com). Then go out to http://www.sysinternals.com and download the TCPView and Autoruns programs. Check for open ports (indicate a possible trojan) with the TCPView program and use the Autoruns program to find the stuff that starts on boot. That'll get you started.
If there is nothing else wrong with your system you should be able to boot with the original CD and run the second repair option. If this works you can then update using the SP2 CD. You will have to update everything added to XP since SP2 but MS will take care of that for you.
I just finished spending over a week fighting a set of problems including what you describe. I could get up and running doing what I described above but that didn't cure the overall problem. The final solution was when I destroyed my operating system partition. I did something stupid to cause that but it worked out well in the end.
I should have done this a lot earlier but I was too stubborn. I reformatted my operating system partition and made a fresh XP installation. I'm still catching up on adding all of my programs.
The repair process is easier if you have a bootable CD with SP2 slipstreamed. That's not any help now though.
Try the Windows install disk and try using the recovery option.
If that doesn't work, you could try the following:
If you have another machine available to you, download a Knoppix Linux Live CD image and use it to boot the sick machine. Then you will be able to (hopefully) see the contents of the drive and copy the vital contents accross the network to another machine, where they can be burned to a CD/DVD. Then you can diagnose the suspect HD without concern for the data on it. You could check and see what types of errors the drive is throwing with SMART HD drive monitoring software.
If the HD is mechanically failing, replace the drive. If it's a corrupted file system, reformat and re-install the OS. YOU WILL LOSE ALL DATA be performing this step, so again, backup the data.
You could also remove the drive, put the jumpers in slave mode, and install a new drive as master. install windows on the new master, re-stall the faulty drive as the slave, and see if you data appears.
Run virus scanning on your old data.
Good luck.
Corrupted boot sector. Buy a new HDD, install XP SP2 and set it to Master. Then take your bad HDD and set it to slave. Then you can copy all of your data back to your new HDD. It is your only chance.
My familiarity with XP limits any help I might provide, but you can be sure some a$$wipe will be along shortly to tell you to switch to Linux.
Good luck in any event!
Well, this is only good for next time, but when it comes back up make a "Bart PC" boot disk.
On Informationweek.com Fred Langa posted an "XP noreformat recovery option."
You're running QBPro, did you know Intuit has a KB article telling everyone how to run it in Limited User Mode? Please don't run XP as admin, you may as well have Win ME. XP as LUA is pretty sturdy.
Use the Google, Luke.
You might be able to do a complete reload of XP. I switched a drive to a new system, motherboard and all. It would not boot. So, believing all was lost I reloaded XP and much to my surprise, my old data was still there. The fresh install inherited the old programs and registry info. I just had to reload all the updates again. Sp1&Sp2. One note though, you still might have a damaged hard drive. Sometimes drives will loose sectors and you'll have boot problems. In fact I'm having that problem now with a backup drive I'm trying to create for my laptop. Good luck
If you have Norton Systemworks, boot from the CD and if you can run the Disk and Win doctor utilities to take a look at your hard drive, do that.
When that fails, and you realize that Windows is fubared and you're going to have to reinstall, consider this a learning opportunity.
Take your hard disk out of the system, put it in an external USB enclosure. Buy a Mac. Attach the enclosure and retrive your files.
Breath easy knowing that this is the last time you'll ever have to do something like this.