Joe Levi:
a cross-discipline, multi-dimensional problem solver who thinks outside the box – but within reality™

Irony: Windows XP SP3 Causes Vista Boot Loop

Late last week I installed Service Pack 3 on my Windows XP virtual machine.  My host machine is Vista 32 Enterprise, not that it should matter. I committed the changes to the VHD (which takes far to long, I might add) then shut down my host machine (which said it had updates to install).

Vista’s got this neat little 3 stage update routine these days, which is fine… This time, however, stages 1 and 2 finished just fine, but Stage 3 got to 0% complete, sat there, then said "Shutting Down"… It would then restart, go back to Stage 3 – 0%, wait, then "Shutting Down."

After about 10 times I figured something was wrong. I tried Last Known Good Configuration, back to Stage 3 – 0%, wait, then "Shutting Down."

Safe Mode with Network Support: back to Stage 3 – 0%, wait, then "Shutting Down."

Safe Mode Command Prompt Only: back to Stage 3 – 0%, wait, then "Shutting Down."

The "fix" from some MS KB Article my buddy found: boot from your DVD media, choose Repair, and roll back to a point before the update.

Nice. Not only do I not have the install media (it’s a Network RIS image), I don’t even have an optical drive in the machine…

1.5 days to reload and update everything… that’s 1.5 days that I didn’t have… :: sigh ::

So I have to wonder: did my Windows XP SP3 VM’s boot loop somehow "infect" my Vista 32 Enterprise host machine? Kinda coincidental, dontcha think?

Technorati Tags: bootloop,boot loop,SP3
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