As the title states, I installed service pack 3 on my home computer, running XP Professional, and it installed fine, acted normal, told me i needed to restart, so I did. It got past to the XP screen, and to the pre-OS update screen, then gives me a bsod, stating some error regaurding gdi32.dll. I can't fully read the error message as it runs off the screen on both sides, but nothing works. I can't boot in safe mode as it is corrupt as well and I can't load "last known good configuration." Obviously can't do a system restore thru xp as it doesn't load windows, though I did set a system restore point right before installing sp3.

I'm currently running on a backup ide hard drive on ubuntu.

So what am I left to do? There is plenty of data on the hard drive that I don't want to lose. Worst case, I can still access it thru ubuntu and back it up to an external, but I'd really rather not deal with reformatting again. Is there a way to do a system restore on a hard drive other than the one I'm running off of? I can install XP pro on another hard drive and run it if I need windows to be able to do so.

TIA

Person here: http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/problem-with-the-gdi32dll-library/168252.html says: "I used the System Recovery Console from WXP Install CD to copy the backup copy of gdi32.dll from C:\Windows\System32\dllcache to C:\Windows\System32 and it works!"

I replaced the gdi32.dll with the same file from a friends computer that just successfully installed SP3. Needless to say, it didn't work, same error. My assumption is that the gdi32.dll file was modified in the installation of service pack 3, so I would think my xp pro sp2 cd file wouldn't work. I'll give it a shot though.

Follow up: still getting the same error.

http://searchwincomputing.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1167895,00.html

We have a few laptops popping up with SP3 related issues and I have not found any fix for it anywhere. I am wondering how well running restore from the recovery console will work.

I have NO idea - I just offered what was available.

Since I never have important data that isn't backed up, I just re-install when the crap hits the fan.

This repair/fix stuff is tedious BUT offers some fun to help with.

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3163197&SiteID=17

This is the only fix I have found. It seems that the dll file gets moved and windows can't find it. You need to copy it back to solve the issue.

Thanks, I just had to copy the gdi32.dll file from the service pack folder thru ubuntu and the windows drive now boots fine again. Thanks for the help guys!