Scared to update to SP3

Backstop

It's a longer story than this, but the facts are that I've built a new system and it keeps not working right.

Mobo - Gigabyte MA74GM-S2
RAM - 2x@GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2
Proc - AMD Phenom 555 Black
HDD - Samsung 500GB

I'm using the onboard video and everything on the mobo.

So two things:

One, When setting up XP Pro it only sees 137 GB of the HDD. I like to set up a partition for the OS and leave all the rest for data and game files, so like if I set aside 30 GB for the OS it only says I have ~100 left. I guess this is a pre-SP1 problem but how do I fix that after updating to SP2 or better?

Two, I install XP Pro, install the MB drivers, hit up Windows Update to get to SP2, then hit up ninite.com to batch-install the usual stuff like Firefox and Steam and Security Essentials. Then Windows update has about 80 things for me to update and then it wants to do SP3. But! twice in a row once I installed SP3 the system stops after POST but before the XP splash screen and says "Disk Read Error - press ctrl-alt-del to reboot". The third time I re-installed it failed to install one of the updates (KB 958869) and hung while installing the next one (KB969059). After that it wouldn't even let me try re-installing again.

I decided that the drive was bad so I exchanged it for a new one, but now here I am at SP2 in the update process and I don't want to go further. Should I?

bowen

Yes, the disk was bad. DREs mean the disk is nearing it's end of life.

Mugsley

Install SP3 before the other updates. After the rounds of restarts, then finish windows update.

Only then should you grab stuff from Ninite. You want your OS in a stable, usable state before adding more programs.

Backstop

Thanks for the advice. Any hints on how to get XP to see the rest of my HDD?

bowen

When you look under disk management (Right click my computer->Manage) you should see blank space, you can create partitions from there.

theclam

Right click on My Computer, go to Manage. Click Disk Management. From there, it depends on how your computer is set up. If it sees the rest of your drive as Free Space, Unallocated or RAW, then you'll have to format it to NTFS, then add a drive letter, or just extend your current partition to take over the empty space (note that if there should be actual data there, this will get rid of it). If it sees that part of the drive as NTFS or FAT32, then you can just right click and assign a drive letter. If there's something other than that, post a screenshot and we can try to help.

Falken

Service pack one doesn't see more disk space than that, sorry.

corky842

It will probably be easier to just slipstream SP3 into your install CD rather than screw around with the partitions when it's already installed. nLite can do it easily. You don't even have to use the other features, but including drivers is rather nice since you don't have to reboot several hundred times after installing them within windows.

Buttcleft

corky842 wrote: »

It will probably be easier to just slipstream SP3 into your install CD rather than screw around with the partitions when it's already installed. nLite can do it easily. You don't even have to use the other features, but including drivers is rather nice since you don't have to reboot several hundred times after installing them within windows.

SP3 can't be slipstreamed.

I recently went through an ordeal with it, you have to install XP with SP2 slipstreamed preferably, hit windows update and get SP3.

Satsumomo

What? I've made a slipstreamed SP3 XP installation twice already...

Buttcleft

Satsumomo wrote: »

What? I've made a slipstreamed SP3 XP installation twice already...

Microsoft says it cant be slipstreamed, and when I did it, it did not work.

are you sure you didnt slipstream SP2?

edit

I retract my statement as fact, being unable to find the page on microsoft.com where i read about SP3 cant be slipstreamed. I still support the rest of my post.

Satsumomo

IIRC, it can only be slipstreamed into an original XP SP2 disc, as in not a slipstreamed SP2. But I might be wrong about that, but I do have a disc with SP3 slipstreamed into it, and it's installed into 2 different computers.

Backstop

theclam wrote: »

Right click on My Computer, go to Manage. Click Disk Management. From there, it depends on how your computer is set up. If it sees the rest of your drive as Free Space, Unallocated or RAW, then you'll have to format it to NTFS, then add a drive letter, or just extend your current partition to take over the empty space (note that if there should be actual data there, this will get rid of it). If it sees that part of the drive as NTFS or FAT32, then you can just right click and assign a drive letter. If there's something other than that, post a screenshot and we can try to help.

Thanks, that worked.