Windows XP SP3 reboot hell (and how to get out of it)
Microsoft's having a tough year with reboots. First it was a reboot ad infinitum
in February, brought on by a flawed
update to Windows Vista. Now the same thing's happening to some users who
have updated to Windows
XP Service Pack 3 (SP3). What gives?
We don't have the answer to that -- at the moment, no one seems to have the
definitive answer to that. But we do have answers to the most pressing questions
about the latest Windows snafu, including a developing game of blame.
What's happening? After some users update to Windows XP SP3, their PCs
reboot -- which is normal -- but then fail to start up, and then reboot again
and again, which is decidedly not normal.
The "endless reboot" cropped up immediately
after Microsoft made XP SP3 available to the general Windows-using public
by posting the service pack to Windows Update last week. Within a day, users
were reporting problems in messages on Microsoft's XP SP3 support forum.
Why are some PCs rebooting endlessly? Microsoft hasn't given any official
explanation, but users on the support forum sharing accounts have identified
several possible causes. Some seem to affect only systems running processors
made by Advanced
Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), while others have also hit users with Intel-based
PCs.
Although it's possible to get a feel for the theories by reading multiple support
forum message threads, the best
source of information has been a frequently updated blog post by Jesper
Johansson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft and currently
an MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional). Johansson, who had one of his
own PCs slip into a reboot coma, has neatly summarized the several possible
causes put forward by himself and other users.
Are only AMD-powered machines sold by HP rebooting over and over? No,
although they've gotten the most press.
According to Johansson and others, Hewlett-Packard
used the same Windows XP disk image to factory install the OS on AMD-based systems
as they used for PCs running Intel processors. That's a mistake, Microsoft contends.
"Under this configuration, after the computer is upgraded to Windows
XP SP2 or SP3, the Intel processor driver (intelppm.sys) may try to load because
an orphaned registry key remains," Microsoft said in a support
document first released in 2004, after the company issued XP SP2.
The presence of the unnecessary driver, said Microsoft, may crash the machine,
causing it to reboot. If the PC is set to automatically reboot on a start failure
-- as most are by default -- it reboots endlessly, often so quickly
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