I hae XPHome and have been happy for the most part. But suddenly I have 2 probs, that I haven't investigated thoroughly yet.
One, the most recent set of updates trashes my machine when I try to install it. I get all sorts of warnings of the general form "AD9Ef-XXXXXXXXX-Yadda could not be written -- the data has been lost" and then scandisk comes on when it reboots and for some reason, no keystrokes will stop scandisk. This has happened 4 times, all with this most recent set of updates. My DVD player has been behaving erratically ever since the first time it happened.
The other is a popup dialog that comes up at odd times advertising male "member" enlargement. It has popped up twice while I was browsing FR. Spy++ indicates that the dialog is a child of the desktop, no process to kill. I have heard of a trojan that does that, and my daughter or one of her friends could unwittingly have downloaded one, but I did not find the file indicated to be the culprit, so I may have a new one.
For all I know, the two problems are related. The timing is certainly a coincidence.
Other than those two recent(but very troubling) problems, I have been happy with XP, once configured to be a little less dummy-fied.
I have another machine(older), that has win98SE on it. I think I am going to set it up with linux eventually, just for kicks.
Ad Aware took care of the little SOBs. The problems are not related.
What that problem sound like to me is one of two things. The first is that an anti virus program is stopping a write to the boot sector and registry. Always turn all that stuff off when installing a update.
The second could be your motherboard BIOS. XP requires that the BIOS be compatible. All motherboard makers have written new BIOS language to update their products. Settings in the BIOS can also affect this, but I would recommend that you find out who made the board and get the newest flash download and save it to a floppy.
If the p'uter came preloaded with XP, then this problem is less likely.
If all else fails, there is always tech support, but I have seen this before in upgrades.
Regedit is another tool. There are many other options, however I assume you are talking about the big SP-1(or whatever) update. This is something you really need and you need to solve the mystery or do a re-format and re-install. Make sure the BIOS is up to date first.