Are SP3 and system restor compatible?
I am have been struggling with this problem for the past six months. It all began after a nasty virus struck my disk, my backup disk and my flash disk. I reinstalled XP using my SP2 disk that came with my Dell machine, and eventually I installed all updates from Microsoft download including ie8.
Shortly afterward the browsing began to be slow, gradually and slowly to the point where I could not navigate beyond my IP web page. I discovered that the system restore did not work at all early on in this saga. I also discovered that I could not uninstall SP3 that was installed by download from Microsoft updates.
So, as you can guess rightfully, I reinstalled the whole thing using my loyal friend SP2. I did this operation four times (with the Tylenol bottle by my side…) without curing the problem.
With SP2 installed, and all my applications installed with it, I could navigate with ie6 freely. So I installed SP3 installer exe file that I previously downloaded from Microsoft updates. That version of SP3 installs only two of the KB files. The system recovery works fine and the online navigation works fine.
I was encouraged and visited Microsoft updates and installed all 56 updates including ie8. Wow! The original problem recurs: I cannot navigate more than about 15 minutes and the browser freezes. I noticed that in this state of freeze ie8 installs itself twice on the task manager, yet there is only one visible website. The system restore doesn’t work any more, and I could not uninstall SP3 from control panel add remove software. I have to start with a new Tylenol bottle…
What is your experience with this kind of problem? Any suggestions?