Hi, I'm hoping somebody can help me out with what now has become a pressing problem.

When XP SP2 first came out, I downloaded and installed it but found that my computer wouldn't boot normally afterwards. The boot would never reach the log-in screen and would continually restart over and over again. As a result I had to restart in safe mode, uninstall SP2 to make my computer useable again.

I tried on several other occassions to make SP2 work but always got the same result.

Now, my Norton Anti-virus has expired, so I downloaded the 2008 upgrade (which cost me £40). When I tried to install the Norton Upgrade it didn't work because it will not install on a computer that doesn't have SP2.

I went to the Microsoft help pages and discovered that the problem I am having with SP2 could be caused by UMAX scanner drivers. I thought I had solved the problem because I do have UMAX drivers installed. So, I used the UMAX uninstall prgram to remove all components from my computer, rebooted and then proceed to download and install SP2 again.

To my horror, the same thing happened again - no log-in screen, just a continual restarting. I am now at a loss as to what to do because I can't install Norton upgrade until I have SP2 installed and my virus protection has now expired.

Can anybody help me please? Thanks in advance.

Having SP1 on your machine all this time is not a good thing considering all the fixes that came with SP2, which means that your machine was vulnerable for a long time and there is a possibility that you might have something bad running. Also now you don’t have the latest virus definitions from Norton, which means more problems. I suggest that you upgrade to SP3 and see if the problem with your scanner persists; I’m not sure if you can go from SP1 to SP3 directly, but if you can’t, then you can apply SP2 and then SP3. If you still have a problem with your scanner, then you can check UMAX’s support site here:
http://umax.com/support/index.jsp

Thanks for this Dino. I've already visited Umax support and got nowhere. I used the Uninstall program which came with the software but I suspect that TWAIN drivers are still lurking in my system, hence my continuing problem with the SP2 install. Do you know of any way to delete scanner drivers manually? Ironically I threw the scanner out a few weeks ago because the drivers failed and wouldn't work the scanner, even after a reinstall.

Yes, it is possible to upgrade tp SP3 directly from SP1 but I'm frightened that if I try it I might get even worse problems than I am already experiencing with the SP2 upgrade.

The reason I have been without SP2 for all this time is because it always created the same problem.

Just a thought: Do I have to disable Norton before I install SP2?

To remove drivers manually you can go to Device Manager, right-click on a device, go to Properties, and under the Driver tab you can choose “Uninstall.” Other than that, you can go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers and have a look around, but I don’t recommend that as it might make your situation worse. As for disabling Norton before applying SP2, I don’t think that you need to do that and I never heard of it before.

I’m not sure that TWAIN “Technology Without an Interesting Name” has anything to do with your machine, but it seems as if you had these problems for a while now, and I suspect that you may have some corrupted files or bad registry entries that are causing these issues. Not to mention being partially unprotected because of not upgrading your SP files, and Norton’s definitions. So here is my suggestion, I’d say that you back up all your important data to an external hard drive, CD, or a DVD, wipe your hard drive clean, and do a clean install of Windows XP. This way you’ll know for sure that you don’t have any conflicts, or infections, on your system, and at the same time be sure that no software remnants of the old scanner, which was the cause of all these problems, are still present on your machine.

The other solution is to try and clean your system manually by finding the offending drivers, registry entries, and files, but I don’t think that this is a viable solution at this stage as you already tried some of it before and it didn’t work. Again, if you’re going to perform a clean install of Windows XP, then don’t forget to back up all your important data first before you do so.

Yes, your sound advice seems to be the only solution Dino. Perhaps I should have tried to sort this problem out with SP2 when I had problems with it when it was first released. It's my own daft fault really.

Hence, I am resigned to the fact that I do indeed have to wipe the HD and reinstall the OS and all my other data. Oh boy, it's going to be real fun backing all my stuff up

Thanks again for your help Dino, I will return here after I have sorted this mess out and let you know how things went.

Cheers

Good luck Steve.