I have a Win2k + SP4 box at work that was running great. It controls some equipment through a multifunction A/D+D/A PCI I/O board. A few weeks ago I noticed that there were some Windows Update fixes that were out. Those things always make me nervous, but we have to keep our systems updated, so ...

I installed the new Windows Update.

I went through the Custom mode and did only the essentials (not .NET, not Direct X 9).

Reboot and things seemed to be OK, other than some serial number issues....

But now Norton Antivirus Corporate's icon on the status bar (or whatever it's called) always indicates that the Realtime Protection is disabled. Reenabling it only lasts about a second. And the critical application that controls the equipment (custom written in Delphi by a colleague) gets into a mode where something that used to happen instantaneously when a checkbox was selected now happens in ~ instantly to ~ 30 s later. :-( Some other software that controls some other equipment won't start at all (it won't connect to its database).

I've tried various diagnostics (MemTest86 on a MEPIS CD ran through all tests in ~ 4.5 hours with no errors; CHKDSK said there was a problem on the NTFS partition with the swap file and fixed it on the next reboot - there were no bad sectors; Norton's WinDoctor fixed some minor issues in the registry), but nothing's helped. In fact the problem is worse now - Explorer.exe crashes and restarts whenever I click on the Start button.

I can't run Windows Update again because IE (the latest version) hangs when it tries to access the internet. Mozilla works fine.

I redownloaded IE 6 and reinstalled it, but the behavior is the same.

It seems to run MEPIS fine from the CD, so it seems to be a Windows software issue. Just to be safe I backed up the partitions on the SCSI boot disk to a 300 GB Seagate IDE.

Others have had problems with NAV and Norton Utilities, but they've generally been fine for me before. Running NAV (with the latest virus definitions) from a Safe Mode boot found no viruses. SBS&D didn't find any problems either. Of course, that's not proof that there isn't an infection, but it doesn't act like it. Symantec Antivirus 10 won't install because the Windows Installer hangs.

What's really annoying is that at least 3 other PCs that have gone through the same Windows Update procedure haven't had these problems. :-( I haven't seen much of anything on the 'net about problems like this, but I haven't looked much either.

Something's messed up pretty badly. I'll probably reinstall Win2k+SP2 and then reinstall SP4, tomorrow. (I love spending my days off fixing things like this...) I'll need to go through the Windows Update rigamarole too - with luck I won't have any further issues, but I don't have a good feeling. :-(

I hope I don't have to wipe the boot partition to fix this problem...

I also hope that some unremovable virus isn't buried in there somewhere. It's not used for e-mail, it's not used for much web stuff, NAV was always updated and active, but some directories are shared through the Windows networking to others in our workgroup. Andrew's stories always give me the whillies. :-(

I too hate computers sometimes.

Cheers,
Scott.
(Who still dreads trying to get KnoppMyth running in a usable state on one of his other home machines but wants to be able to record and time shift shows so he'll have to take that leap too...)