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?

My understanding is that the double entry is due to the IE8 'crash recovery' component.

As to the freezing issue, have you tried disabling all add-ons?

There were no add-ons, just plain SP2 updated to SP3.

He means add-ons for internet explorer.

Now the system iis up and working but the system recovery is not, and I cannot uninstall SP3. We are back to square one, this is how the saga started. How I can force system recovery to work, and how I can unistall install SP3 without reinstalling the whole thing? Any suggestion?

Try the suggestion of removing the add ons for IE8 then let us know how things are working.

Where these add-ons could have been stored?

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/3892/...et-explorer-8/

Earlier I posted a message reply but the brower got epileptic and the message did not display

Just before I got your link I logged on. I went to XP thread, the page opened but my bowser got epileptic again. I close the browser using task manager and I went to the page without logging on. I retrived the link you posted and I followed the instructions. That's how I managed to get to post this message.

I will try to check on the system restore and and we'll see how it goes.

I came back to post a message, before this one, and here’s what happened.
I checked the add-ons. All were disabled.

I opened the windrivers page. No problem and it was fast. I typed my ID and password. As soon as I clicked log in the browser froze on me. The only way to delete it was using the task manager.

I cleared the cach from history, cookies and temporary files. I opened windrivers again. It opened. I typed in my ID and psw and clicked log in. It did and I typed my message and clicked submit. There the browser froze again.

I typed this message on notepad and came back here using the same previous steps. I pasted this message and clicked submit. If this message is appended past the stars line that follows that means the browser froze on me before it posted the message.
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Votan: I am wondering if you have some kind of rootkit infection that hasn't been removed and need to do a zero-fill and reinstall again (worth trying anyway, despite the tediousness).

http://www.dban.org/

So far, my browser gets epileptic only when I visit windrivers site. Peculiar Hm!

It is happening to me also. I opened safari to be able to post this message. IE is locked up.Using 50% of the resources. HMMMMMMM:confused:

dban is not working for me not with a CD not with flash drive, I don't have floppy. this is the fifth time I am trying to long on here.

Well, I don't use IE8 anymore - I had issues with it and IE7 so I dumped them. IE6 has been problem-free.

All I can recommend for your issue is to ensure popups are blocked at Medium setting and that Third Party Cookies are blocked.

edit: you might want to turn the phishing filter off and restart IE8 and see how that works.

ie6 was loaded when I installed SP2. It worked fine and I tested system restore it worked fine as well.

The problem appears to begin upon downloading and installing SP3 updates from Micrsoft. SP3 becomes uninstallable and system restore stops working.

In my understanding, I hope I am not wrong, rstrui.exe is the system restore utility. Is there a way to verify whether this utility is not altered by installing SP3 updates?

The epilepsy issue of ie8 (I am not in love with ie8!) seems incurable, just like brain epilepsi. Yesterday I was lucky when I could log in to windrivers whithout having iexplorer freezing on me. This did not happen today, so far I would say.

What you could try is to install SP2 with IE6 ONLY, then disable system restore, reboot and run the sp3 installer.

I don't use IE8 because it's slow as heck, I've restored it, repaired it, and i've removed ALL add-ons. It's just a shoddy piece of work. It's on all 4 of my computers ranging from XP, Vista 64, Win7 32 and 64 bit. I only use IE8 if I have to use it to visit a website that has browser specific requirements. Outside of that Opera is my main browser. However if it's using more than 10% of resources that sounds more serious than just a crap distribution. By the way has anyone considered that votan may have some sort of spyware/malware that is active? You may need to do a full scale cleanup with malwarebytes and an antivirus program. I'd suggest esets online virus scanner to check for the infaction if you've already used a scanner. Also you may want to download hijackthis and post the report on here for us to look over.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Niclo Iste

I don't use IE8 because it's slow as heck, I've restored it, repaired it, and i've removed ALL add-ons. It's just a shoddy piece of work. It's on all 4 of my computers ranging from XP, Vista 64, Win7 32 and 64 bit. I only use IE8 if I have to use it to visit a website that has browser specific requirements. Outside of that Opera is my main browser. However if it's using more than 10% of resources that sounds more serious than just a crap distribution. By the way has anyone considered that votan may have some sort of spyware/malware that is active? You may need to do a full scale cleanup with malwarebytes and an antivirus program. I'd suggest esets online virus scanner to check for the infaction if you've already used a scanner. Also you may want to download hijackthis and post the report on here for us to look over.

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It seems Votan is not reading all posts. Get your Tylenol bottle and Write zero`s to your harddrive and then reinstall windoze. Then becareful what you install, Do you have software on your flash drive? It may be the infection you do not want.

Suddenly the system restore is working as of today. I could not figure out why. However, I curiously checked the running processes in task manager. I haven't noticed this before. iexplorer.exe runs in two copies! if I delete one, it is recreated again instantly. If I delete the second, at times the browser is shut down all togeter, at other times it shuts down taking with it explorer.exe hostage. I have to reboot!

Is it normal ie runs in two copies?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xpuser357

It seems Votan is not reading all posts. Get your Tylenol bottle and Write zero`s to your harddrive and then reinstall windoze. Then becareful what you install, Do you have software on your flash drive? It may be the infection you do not want.

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I do read all messages. I get notice be email that a message is waiting for me.

I have backup of files on my flash drives, not applications.