The mayhem caused by Win XP SP2

BANGALORE: Microsoft's much awaited Windows XP Service Pack 2 was tested on machines running Windows XP Pro with SP1 running on Intel and AMD processors by engineers in a test lab. These geeks were expecting potential compatibility issues on installing SP2 but much to their surprise the systems showed the much-dreaded 'blue screen' and all possible attempts to restore Windows failed. Said an

online

report.

After trying all possible ways out these test engineers reached out to Microsoft for support.

Microsoft provided steps to come out of the blue screen and uninstall SP2, but was not able to provide a satisfying answer to the appearance of the blue screen and the other damages it might have caused to the system.

Support engineers at Microsoft recommended using Windows XP recovery console to boot the system and then accessing the "%windir%\$NtServicePackUninstall$\spuninst" folder and rename the file "spuninst.txt" to "spuninst.bat" and execute the batch command "batch spuninst.bat." Rollback of the service pack happened after the second run of the batch file after which the following settings were made to the registry "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\RpcSs\ObjectName" to "LocalSystem" and "windir%\$NtServicePackUninstall$\spuninst\spuninst.exe," had to be executed which prompted additional rollback changes to the registry.

However, this was not the end of the nightmare, much to the surprise of the test engineers the rollback process uninstalled all devices attached to the PC, the network card the video card etc. The computer was able to reinstall all these devices except the Matrox Millennium P650, graphics card, which had to be downloaded from the company's Web site. The rollback also removed SP1, these engineers verified the same from the Windows update page where SP1 existed as a critical update and needed to be installed again. According to a claim by Symantec machines running SP2 will need a Norton patch, however test engineers refuted this claim.

The software giant has been pitching on the stronger security that this patch will deliver and its ease of use thereby giving users a safer browsing experience and secure infrastucture to work on. There have been delays one after the other in its release owing to the added features the company claims it is adding to this update. However, if this is the kind of havoc the update is going to cause to the system Microsoft has to think twice before launching the final release.

A word of advice if you are planning to install SP2 on your system, take a complete backup of your system with Imaging software like Symantec Ghost or Acronis before proceeding.