I've got a machine, which has Microsoft Office on it so I would rather not wipe and reinstall, which used to be infested with Spyware, until the nice folks at Spywareinfo helped me clean it. Unfortunately, it won't install XP SP2.

I've tried everything I can think of, including safe mode, but it keeps crashing with an "internal error" message. I've found a couple troubleshooting documents on the web, but they didn't really help.

I thought maybe someone here could help.... If anyone can help, please advise. I have a setupapi.log and a svcpack.log file I can post from the most recent attempt.

Why use an OS which can easily be infected by spyware/malware/virus etc.,? Learn from your mistakes. Use Linux instead of M$ Windows! It is much more resistant to all those evil stuff.

raju

Are you getting the "internal error" when you are trying to install XP or just during computer normal usage?

Are you trying to reinstall Windows XP over top of your old copy? If so, I'd say don't bother. This used to be a technique for older versions of Windows, but with XP or newer it's not really necessary. One alternate you can try to reload some of the systems original files is by using the system file checker which will (normally) ask for the XP CD and recreate somewhat of an original state. There's other things you can try, but I'd have to ask why you are doing it and what is your intended end result?

If you would like to try kamaraju's suggestion, I would recommend downloading a copy of PCLinuxOS which is an extremely simple Linux distribution that you can download as an ISO file and burn to a CD. Then, you can boot directly from it and it is completely functional w/o having to install anything on your HDD. It comes with all the software you would need to do just about anything and doesn't require any (or very little) experience with Linux. If you decide you want to install it, it has a function to create a dual boot so you can use XP and Linux. It also makes for a good emergency CD if you have a crash and have to get some work done.

The "Internal Error" is only when I try to install SP2. It gets to the point of trying to install the update, and then errors out with the non-specific error message "internal error. Service pack 2 was not installed."

Thanks, but I'm quite familiar with linux. I'm the IT admin and inherited this PC from the previous admin who had not bothered to do any updates. I did not think about the SFC command, and that might be a good starting point.

As for linux, that's not an option, as this is a business PC and we're a Windows XP shop. I use linux at home for my personal computer, but my wife is a Windows user, so we have that for her. :-) Anyway, I'll see if I can't find a generic Windows XP (no SP) CD and give that a shot.

Y'all can disregard this thread. I gave up on trying to upgrade that PC and just wiped it and did a fresh install of XP Pro SP2.