Foo - a request for computer help

just wondering if anybody here knows a lot about computer operating systems. here's the story: i have windows xp & am trying to re-install windows service pack 2. i recently did a disc recovery & when i do that, it goes back to service pack 1, so i have to do the upgrade by downloading it off the microsoft site. i did these install/upgrades before with no problem, but this time after i re-downloaded service pack 2, i got an error message when the install was half way through: "service pack 2 setup error unable to read or write to the data base service pack 2 installation not complete" ??? what's up with this? i have a request in to windows for technical support, but it might be a week until i hear from those morons. anybody here know something about this?

Do you happen to have any anti-virus installed and running while installing? Hgave you tried rebooting the computer and restarting the installation ? You should make sure all anti-virus are disabled wheninstalling as they often times can interrupt the installation

check your c:\ drive for errors.

1) Scan your computer for viruses using an up-to-date antivirus program. If you don't have one, or you have a feeble freebie one, then try my manual McAfee scanning techinque: http://www.omnicast.net/~tmcfadden/scan.txt Very good stuff. Follow directions exactly.

2) Scan your computer for spyware using Spybot Search & Destroy from http://www.safer-networking.org and Ad-Aware SE Personal from http://www.lavasoft.de.

3) Download the full-file SP2 installer (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=049c9dbe-3b8e-4f30-8245-9e368d3cdb5a&displaylang=en) from Microsoft and save it on your hard drive.

4) Now reboot into standard Safe Mode and run the SP2 installer. In Safe Mode, you remove interference from all sorts of stuff.


Good luck :)

I've had a boot-sector virus that loaded itself up before Windows and wreaked all sorts of havoc with memory-management and caused crashes along the way when Windows tried to boot. Re-installing Windows did no good. Final solution was to boot from a clean uninfected floppy-disk with CD-ROM drivers, then running the antivirus program off a CD to wipe the virus from the HD. Formatted the HD clean, and got Windows installed OK.

I've heard rumors of a BIOS virus that will infect the BIOS chip on the motherboard and spawn itself onto every type of media you try to use, floppies, HDs, writable optical-medias, etc... Haven't been able to find any concrete info on this though..

i was told to do this on another board & it worked:
Cryptographic service error
Error 0x800710D9 Unable to read from or write to the database
The quickest and most thorough way to solve this problem is a batch file, written by fellow MVP Torgeir Bakken from Norway. Reboot the computer and, before running any other program, run the batch file. It will tell you when it is finished. Here it is: fixdb.bat - http://winhlp.com/tools/fixdb.bat

1) Scan your computer for viruses using an up-to-date antivirus program. If you don't have one, or you have a feeble freebie one, then try my manual McAfee scanning techinque: http://www.omnicast.net/~tmcfadden/scan.txt Very good stuff. Follow directions exactly.

+1 on this. I use it regularly with very good results. Get's out stuff others can't.