I installed service pack 1a last week, and now the GUI won't load. To correct the problem, MS says to run the restore to roll-back the changes. Unfortunately, I either did not get or lost the restore disk that came with my Micron PC. Micron and MS have refused to replace the disk, so I am going to try to run the restore from the I386 folder on the hard drive. I haven't done this in a few years (with Win95) and am hoping someone can send some basic instruction my way.

Take the hard drive out of the machine. Put it in another machine on the secondary controller. Run CHKDSK on the hard drive. My experience is that it will fix most XP corruptions. You might run a virus check while you are at it.

I had put the hard drive in a machine with Win98 on it, it was being recognized in the boot-up as a slave, but I could not see the drive in Windows or get to it at a DOS prompt. I was hoping that I'd be able to copy my files off of it and just buy a new XP disk and start fresh (altho I don't think I should have to pay again for software I already own, but that's a rant for another day...) Do you know a way I can get Win98 to assign the drive a letter so I can access it?

Try booting to safe mode command-prompt (F8 when boot menu appears) and navigate to the I386 folder. WINNT [enter] should start the ball rolling. The reason you can't see the drive in W98 is that it's probably NTFS format. I hope you've got the product key handy - if it's an OEM copy of XP look for it on a case sticker (back or side). If this fails you can try bootdisk.com and download a set of XP Pro boot disk images.

Deby, I believe that Microsoft meant that you should use "System Restore" and choose a date prior to when you installed the SP1a update. To get to System Restore click Start/All programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore. Choose the latest date prior to the date of the SP1a update and your problem should be gone. In other words if you installed the SP1a update on October 9, 2003 choose a Restore Point closest to that date but prior to it (e.g.: October 8 or 7 or 6). Note: If you installed any other Windows Updates after the System Restore date you chose to use you will have to download & install them again. Tufenuf

Difficult clicking on ANYTHING when the GUI (desktop) won't load....

Rambler, My error, I should have read the post more closely. Sorry about that. Deby, Disregard my Response. Tufenuf