Vista - vista sp2 wont install

hi, i rebooted my comp and when i try to install sp 2 i get this message

Installation was not successful

An Illegal character was encountered. For a multi-byte character set this includes a lead byte without a succeeding trial byte. For the Unicode character set this included the characters

0xFFFF and 0xFFFE

Error: ERROR_ILLEGAL_CHARACTER (0X80070246)

any idea what i need to do to solve this problem ?
I want to intall sp2 because I have added 4gb ram and my computer keeps crashing and i heard sp2 had a fix for this.

Restore system to any previos checkpoint System Restore - undo

message still coming up

getting this message now

Error(s) found;

Code 800F080D Windows Update encountered an unknown error.


any idea wt i should do now ?

Are you trying to install it through Windows update?

I've just bought a new 64bit system. I downloaded a standalone copy of SP2 and installed from that without any troubles. Make sure you download the correct version I didn't and had to go through the same thing all over again

i have done both installed through Windows Update and done it manually.

downloaded standalone sp2 then tried installing sp2 but the error message is still coming up an i have downloaded the files from the microsoft website

any ideas what I should try doing now ?

Don't want to discourage you ... but I had a similar problem with installing SP 2 on a Vista Ultimate 32-bit install. Spent HOURS on the phone and on remote support with MS. They ran scripts resetting Windows Update state, they downloaded and tried to install it themselves, they tried to remove SP1, we even did a nondestructive reinstall of Ultimate. Nothing worked.

What they said I should do is wipe and reinstall from scratch.

Fortunately for me, I had biweekly image backups, but I had to go back three months before I found one that would not fail "sfc /scannow".

So, unless you have backups, a reinstall from scratch may be the only thing that will fix it.

Hello jerky123,
Take a look here and try this.
Hope this helps, and please post your results, thanks.


Vista Update Error 80070246

One technical warning to previous post , the simplest way to extract files from install.wim is using 7-zip ,instead WAIK

trying it now wish me luck =P

Make sure your anti virus is disabled while you are installing sp2