Problem With Win2000 Update

[aromeo]

Last night I was do a long overdue update of my Windows 2000 Professional OS. Everything loaded and installed fine and it prompted me that I had to restart my computer. I accepted and it shutdown and started back up. Once it was past the 'Loading Personal Settings' , it gave me the following error message:

The instruction at "0x7e58e9d9" referenced memory at "0xffff0000". The memory could not be "read".
Click OK to terminate the program
Click on CANCEL to debug the program

If i hit either OK or CANCEL the error message closes and I'm left with a black screen, with no explorer features or anything, just blank. By the way, in the title bar of that error it reads: "userinit.exe - Application Error". The only thing I have been able to do is hit ctrl + alt + delete and that brings up the options of Lock Computer, Change Password, Log Off, Task Manager, Shut Down and Cancel. I tried hitting Task Manager so I could try to open explorer from there, but it just gives me the same error only it says "TaskManager.exe - Application Error" in the title bar. I did do some recent tweaking to my registers, but I rebooted after I did that and it worked fine untill I did the Windows update. Could the regedit combined to with the update could have caused the problem, and is there anything possible to try without using the Windows 2000 disk (which I dont have). I tried to boot in safe mode and it gave me the same thing. Any help at all would be nice, if you think I should either recover my computer or take it to someone go ahead and say so, but that will be my last resort.

[Wiggo]

Run Memtest86 and if ya get any errors raise the memory voltage if ya can by 0.1v (if ya run more than one stick then test each one individually) but if ya still get errors then ya memory has gone to lunch on ya. BTW if ya got the system overclocked then set it back to stock speed. If ya don't get any errors with that test then ya likely have an application that is now causin' the problem.

Ya didn't do any driver updates did ya? :?:

[aromeo]

I cant run programs at all. Cause I can't get anything on the screen except the ctrl + alt + delete screen which gets me no where. I didn't over clock my computer either. I don't know how to raise the voltage on my memory. Is that done through BIOS?

[aromeo]

also i forgot to mention that im not posting from that computer, im posting from my other computer

[asklepios]

your problem seems to be a rare one

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=331490

[aromeo]

Thanks for the link. That is very strange though. It is telling me the way to fix the problem is to install the latest service pack, and that is what caused the problem in the first place for me. And I have a problem because I can't open anything at all, I have no start menu, no icons, no nothing. I tried booting up in every mode and the same problem occured every time. I'm about to give up and load Linux onto the system, but I don't really know Linux that well, any suggestions on what flavor I should get, keep in mind that it is a really slow computer. 300 MHz K-6.

[asklepios]

yeah sorry that u r experiencing this thing. actually as u can see that it is a very rare problem. if you want you can contact MS and get the particular hotfix for yourself.
on Linux front, you did not mention how much RAM you have but still i would recommend that you get a live CD of knoppix (recommended) or gnoppix. you will be able to boot directly from the CD and get on with your work. also knoppix has been known to have a very good hardware detection. once you get hang of things you can install minimal distros like slackware with something like fluxbox/blackbox and work from there. i hope that helps. cheers

[aromeo]

Yea. I'm not sure about the hotfix. I don't think there is anything I can do at this point. The Microsoft article on it basicly explains that it won't effect your explorer, but my explorer won't even come up at all, so my problem my be even more rare than what the Microsoft site was fixing. As for the Linux distro, thanks for the advice, I will definitly look into that. I had another idea, that if I could get my hands on a Windows 2000 disk, I could run it so that it boots from a cd and try to run the repair feature. I'm not at all sure that Windows 2000 disks have that feature, but I assume that they do.