XP Service Pack 3 Uninstall Fails, File Missing

[almcneil]

Techspotters,

I recently goofed with a customer. He has Windows XP Media Center and I naively installed Service Pack 3 on it. He called me back complaining that his Windows is not working properly. I then discovered that XP Service Pack 3 is not intended for XP Media Center. We then went to uninstall it and keep getting an error "Specified file cannot be found" I checked the spuninst.log file and found this error:

Rename failed. Source path c:\windows\$NtUninstallKB953356$ does not exist.

Any suggestions on how to fix this?

TIA

 

[gbhall]

That patch is a pre-SP3 patch for AMD machines, or similar. Read this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953356 and see if it helps. I would try installing it, then trying to uninstall SP3 again. This assumes you did not install SP3 and tell it you don't need a backup !

But the chances are not good (I think) that you will get your customer's PC back without a roll-back (system restore to an earlier than SP3 restore point).

 

[almcneil]

Thx GB!

Actually, I noticed the reference to the KB article so I checked the Microsoft KB for that number and found out about that hotfix. Installed it and then the SP3 uninstall worked!