This started with Windows update, it wouldn't even download, just gave me an error. I tried Safe Mode and no good, then back to normal mode and it worked! I was happy. Sp2 started installing and got through stages 1 and 2 then rebooted, got through stage 3 up to 100%, paused for a few minutes then said the service pack failed to install and it started undoing everything.

I've tried this a number of times over the past year since it was released and it has always failed. Just for disclosure's sake, I have OSX installed on another partition, but that was installed in June when the SP2 trouble started back in January, so it shouldn't be related.

This is my laptop's info:
Vista Home Prem x86, Core 2 Duo, 1.5 GHz, GeForce 8600M GS, 2GB RAM

OK I'll do that. BTW I found the stand-alone installer and tried that. As expected it didn't work, but when finished it did give me this error code:



The link goes to this page: How to troubleshoot Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 service pack installation issues

I downloaded the Readiness Tool and it took a good 15 mins or so to install, does it actually have to be run, or is that all I had to do, install it?

OK I saw that it made the log file so here's the zip with the requested files.

Originally Posted by Flavius

I'll diagnose tommorow your logs,but into in this link Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 service pack installation fails with error 0x80004005

Your error relate to any hardware issues

-unplug all third party devices,if you have more than one hdd leave only master,remains unplug too.

When you install Vista SP2, the Vista SP2 installer must update the system boot files. If third-party disk management tools are used to "clone" disks or partitions, the SP2 installer will be unable to uniquely identify the correct system boot files.

This part of that link sounds like it might have to do with the Darwin boot loader that switches between the Vista and OSX installs. It loads OSX by default and I have to stop it and manually switch if I want Vista. I was thinking of getting rid of OSX anyway, I find it pretty useless. I'll wait for your diagnosis but if that's the case I have no problem with doing it. Thank you.

Thanks I got those zipped up. I have a Dropbox account that I like to use for this stuff. Here's a link to the files: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3083393/sp2_reports_more.zip

I diagnosed your logs.Interesting is only your setupapi.dev.log - I attached here filtered log: Dev3a.txt

the most interesting in this log are repeated many times these lines:

!!! inf: Exported function 'DllRegisterServer' in OLE Control 'C:\Windows\system32\nvsvsr.dll' not found.
!!! inf: Error 127: The specified procedure could not be found.
!!! inf: Failed to register OLE server 'C:\Windows\system32\nvsvsr.dll'.

google about this driver nvsvsr.dll File Diagnosis Information - Spyware Cease - Anti Spyware Made Easy. Free Spyware Scan

In my opinion you have to update or uninstall these NVIDIA drivers

Another suspicious things are these things:

cci: PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4311&SUBSYS_1363103C&REV_01\4&84DF27F&0&00E3: (loading external data) Error 0x800F020B opening pci\ven_8086&dev_1092 instance key
cci: !!! NCI: Removing PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1092&SUBSYS_30B2103C&REV_02\4&1753FBD&0&40F0 from core because its external data is missing
cci: !!! NCI: (loading external data) Error 0x800F020B opening pci\ven_14e4&dev_4311&rev_01 instance key
cci: !!! NCI: Removing PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4311&SUBSYS_1363103C&REV_01\4&84DF27F&0&00E3 from core because its external data is missing
!!! flq: Error installing file (0x00000002)
!!! flq: Error 2: The system cannot find the file specified.

It would be any problems with network adapter or bluetooth...

Interesting I'll look into updates for that driver. I know they just added CUDA support when I installed that driver, perhaps something was still buggy. If not an update, maybe I can jsut uninstall it, update SP2, then install it again. I don't know about the network adapter but that laptop has no bluetooth.

Since you've been so helpful with this problem how would you like to take a look at a thread on my other computer, that thread is actually much more dire than this one.
10 second freezes

Thanks!