Good morning.
I am in Maine and I thnak you for the help.

Last night before bed I shut down my computer and it said, on the blue screen I see every time I shut down "Updates are being installed (1 of 1) Do not turn off or unplug your computer. it will turn off automatically."

Well that was five hours ago and I still see the same screen.

I felt I was so close to getting my computer back to normal after a weekend of tinkering with it due to a different problem.

Has anyone out there ever seen an update take five hours to install? Is three a safe way to get my computer out of this without holding down the power key?

Thanks,
George

Hi. I know you are loathe to do it i encounter a similar problem from time to time and i would recommend you do exactly what you say - shut your pc down by just pressing and holding the power button. I know it's not ideal but it sounds like your pc has just frozen.
What was it updating, any idea?
Once you have turned it back on, you can always restart it just to ensure everything is ok. Good Luck

Thanks Dave-

It was installing Windows Installer 3.1

I did do the hold power button, restarted and still the WIndows Installer 3.1 update was giving me fits to install.

There's something weird going on ...

I tried System Restore and that also froze.

I am running the Repair XP from the XP disk right now.

Hope it works for you.

Post back if it doesn't and i'm sure somebody will be able to help.

Good luck

Howdy:

Do you have SP2 installed?? If not, get it.. Installer 3.1 is included..

Murray

Thanks DAve and Murray.

I'm working on gettin gSP2, but now I have a different problem.

There seems to be a problem with my wireless configuration or somethin. When I try to open the Wireless Network Setup Wizard, I get the following error: "Error in wzcdlg.dll Missing Entry:FlashConfigCreateNetwrok"

Also, in my Event Viewer, there are countless sets of these following errors: "Remote Access COntrol MAnager falied to start because it could not create buffers. Restart the computer. Access is denied."

followed by: "The Remote Access Connection MAnager terminated with the following error: Access is denied."

I will try to get SP 2 now. Hopefully it will clear it up.
Thanks,
George

I just noticed while in Safe Mode in Device Manager, that my Microsoft System Mgmnt BIOS Driver is haveing problems: "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing."

Is it possible to download a new version of this file from anywhere?
Thanks George

Take a look when you are in normal mode..

Murray

same thing.

Darn.

I'm hestitant to add the SP 2 now because of these problems.

I don't want to trap the problems underneath

Boy oh Boy.
Now my EventLog service has stopped ... and there doesn't seem to be a way to restart it.

Do you have SP1 installed at least??

Murray

i did have sp 2 before all this trouble began (thanks to a corrupt installation of Linksys Wireless G Card model WPC54G). Since then I have run two XP repairs and done a bit of tinkering in places i'm probably not supposed to (i.e. the starup items).

I have decided to download and install sp 2 now, in fact as I type, because I have some deadlines coming up and I at least need some internet security.

hey I seem to have figured it out.

(at least for now that is!!)

It was quite a battle, but looking at it from the other side, I realize that there's no place I'd rather be on three sunny days in a row than inside and on the geekstogo.com forums.

I installed the SP 2 and things went well, but I was still getting the weird behavior with some of my devices. Then I I updated all my drivers and uninstalled MS IIS. There seemed to have been a corruption in that because as soon as I got rid of IIS, stuff went smoother.

Thanks Geeks.
George